SAVAGE HOLLOW

SAVAGE,

HOLLOW

by william 

artificial colour brown

Fuck you.

What are you going to do about that, huh?

Challenge me to a fucking duel or something?

You know what I liked to do?

You want to know what fucked up things I liked to do?

For starters…I loved to walk over to the person I had just shot and stick my finger in the bullet hole, pull it out and smell it.

Smelled like pussy to me.

After the duel I’d go home and jerk off.

Stress relief.

My name isn’t important and the time that I existed in means nothing. The only thing that was important was that I was the greatest dueler in all the land.

Before that I was one of your regular dick heads with a name like Greg or Fred or Jim or whatever you wanted it to be.

I worked in a rat maze of cubicles, pretending that what I did had some sort of meaning.

But, it was a dead zone. A place filled with graveyard dirt. But, you all know about those places and those people.

I want to tell you about something that you don’t know.

Places that you’ve never seen.

People that you’ve never met.

Like following Alice down the rabbit hole, I want you to follow me down the bullet hole.

I want to tell you about life, and I most definitely want to tell you about death.

Welcome to my dream.

CHAPTER 1:

STRAIGHT

SHOOTER

Now, if you think this story is about guns…better put this book down and grab whatever guns and ammo type magazines are under your mattress and jerk off to those, cause this isn’t about guns…of course guns were used in the majority of the duels…and a wide variety of guns from ancient to modern were used.

But, as far as I’m concerned a gun is a gun…some shoot faster…some shoot straighter…some are small…some are big…

Now I should also mention, that if you think this story is about guns as a metaphor for my dick…then you most definitely need to reach under that mattress of yours and pull out a different sort of magazine to use with your vaseline!

Now let’s take this a step-further…it’s time people stopped letting others spoon feed them and started using their fucking imaginations again.

So, here’s a little experiment, what do you see when you read the word…

GUN

There we go. Wasn’t too hard was it? Didn’t have to travel too deep into your imagination did you?  So every time I say the word gun, all you have to do is imagine the gun that comes to your mind.

Got it? Get it? Good.

Next topic…I lived in the city affectionately known as Dog Shit…it had a real city name, but we never used it.

After dueling became popular again and part of the culture, the intellectuals said we were shooting each other as a means  “to freedom” and “and it was through this physical death that the ego would also die and that the birth of a new society would begin.”

People scoffed at that last statement…but I agreed with it.

I agreed with it as a set of words placed neatly…side by side with each other. Those words looked so pretty I framed them and put it in my bathroom…and every time I defecated I stared at it with affection.

The beautiful part about dueling was that things like words…written or spoken…were useless.

In the act of turning and reaching for that gun, you began to think…

Stray thoughts led to…

Stray emotions led to …

…being shot in the fucking throat!

Made for great entertainment for the spectators though.

Did you know that a man that is killed by a bullet to the heart, dribble’s semen out of his penis?

Some shit, some piss…but some cum? How do I know this?... Because I checked.

What happened after a person died, fascinated me in the beginning.

In those days, once you were dead your body was quickly taken away.

Sometimes you could go to a funeral and there would be an open casket, but those bodies and faces were embalmed. Faked to look alive.

In the early days, there would be no spectators and no witnesses either.

Just you and the other dueler.

So I took advantage after they died…I’d walk over…if it was a woman I’d take my clothes off, feel her breasts, put my finger in her pussy.

If it was a man I’d touch the tip of his penis…I’d cup his balls.

A couple of times the men would have hard ons…and I would masturbate them until they came.

My experiments might be a bit fucked up and shocking to you, they might even be deemed criminal in your eyes.

But, to me my experiments were necessary.

My state of mind…in those times.

For this is not about the present, but about the past.

There’s been other books written about the past…other books written by other duelers, written by observers…written by academics.

But I was the greatest dueler in all the land.

I was the best, and I survived to tell the tale.

The way I saw.

The way it was.

CHAPTER 2:

LANNY

MACDONALD

I SEE YOU WANT MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY ALL MEANS, BUT I ASSURE YOU THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO LIMIT YOURSELF ONLY TO AN OUTSIDE INSPECTION AND GET BUT A GLIMPSE, PERHAPS, INTO THE DARK WINDOWS. I SELDOM ASK ANYBODY TO ENTER.
– EUGENE ZAMIATIN

The dick slapping joke about this whole fucking thing is that I grew up in a pacifist household.

My parents knelt at the alter of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr….John Lennon and the Dalai Lama…guns were like poisonous rattle snakes, lying in the grass. Rattle tail rattling. Pick one up and you’d get bit and die.

See one and use extreme caution, until you were out of harms way.

My mother’s family, were big hunters living off of the venison that they hunted and killed.

They had a bunch of land in the mountains.

I went to visit them once. I sat up in the tree stand with my cousins and my uncle, sipping on my first beer and waiting for deer to appear.

One day we got pretty drunk and my uncle slapped my back and put his rifle in my hands.

He told me where to look and where to pull.

My cock got hard at its touch.

I wanted to pull that trigger right away.

But I had to wait.

I waited so long I got blue balls.

But, then a doe and a buck came out of the bush and started to fuck.

I looked at my uncle who nodded slowly.

I sighted that big buck in the middle of the scope.

Steadied my arm…and pulled the trigger.

The bullet found its mark and the buck screamed.

The doe ran off into the bush.

We climbed out of the tree and ran over to the buck.

It was dead. Its eyes were glassy. I looked down at its still hard cock and saw it had shot its load.

I looked down and saw that the crotch of my pants was wet. I had shot my own load as well.

That was the last time I ever saw my uncle and my cousins on my mom’s side again.

It didn’t matter cause the seed had already been planted.

After that I became more interested in Fidel Castro, Malcolm X , Dead Kennedy’s and Louis Riel.

When I turned 18, I broke my parents heart and joined the military and asked to be sent to the front lines.

My parents turned their backs and I walked away.

I wanted my own path to follow.

In the year of something or other…The Rulers sent me to the Secret Wars that were happening in each and every border city.

My tour of duty, funny enough, had nothing to do with the borders, but with the civil war that was gaining momentum all within the borders.

It was non-denominational and it was ugly. There was martial law in many of the cities and no laws outside of them.

It was like walking through a minefield blindfolded.

You needed luck and an intuitive sense to get to the other side…alive.

I was part of a platoon nicknamed the Mustache Riders. There were 18 of us and we all had mustaches. The city we were in was a clusterfuck and we needed a way of telling who was who. So we grew mustaches as big and as thick as we could.

We didn’t know each other’s real names. We didn’t want to get too close, knowing death was always a trigger pull away.

Instead we called each other by our mustache names. I had a long red mustache and was called Lanny Macdonald, because of the resemblance to the old time hockey player.

Every morning we’d split off into groups of 3…6 in each group and move through a section of blocks, trying to restore a sense of balance.

We had to move by the suns light because there was little to no electricity in most points. Coal and oil had long since been used up.  Some people used small wind or solar collectors but most didn’t because you could be killed if you had one of those.

We moved quickly and silently. The city was eerily quite during the daylight. But you could feel the eyes.

A baby’s cry cut through the air like a chemical trail and I immediately leaped for cover behind a garbage dumpster in the back of some apartment alley way.

The Rulers issued a decree disallowing the birth of any unauthorized babies to be born during this time. They said it was because resources were scarce and hid behind some veil of equality for all. But, the truth was that they didn’t want to be overthrown by a group of vengeful people raised in the injustice of our time.

My philosophy at that time was selfish. To be on the side of proper meals, shelter and clothing was more important to me then the ethical questions of the day.

Above me I saw a whole system of ladders and ropes linked together in between the two buildings. People traveled above ground, building to building. Like a spider colony… there could be hundreds within those buildings.

The baby cried again. The sound came from up above.

I signaled to my comrades that I was going to take a look.

A door with a cheap padlock was to the left of me. I kicked it in…they knew we were here…so why finger fuck around with it?

I ducked into the corridor and it was dark and smelled of dead bodies.

A set of stairs went up about 13 floors. I walked up, keeping close to the wall. On each floor landing I’d stop and listen.

The baby’s cry came clear on floor number 9. I opened the hallway door, ready to fire.

I stood and sweated. All the apartment doors were open letting in a natural light as I walked down the hall. My mind was empty. My senses were searching.

The baby’s cry came again but this time muffled. I located the door and entered.

My gun looked for movement, but found none.

A short hallway opened up into a living room.

It stank of dampness and mold. A ratty mattress was on the floor against the wall, with torn sheets on top.

The floor was covered with garbage and a rat scurried at my approach.

A window had a hole through it the size of a baseball.

I walked through the only available door at the far end of the living room and entered.

I saw the baby in the crib first and the man with the gun pointed at me last.

He told me to drop the gun and I replied.

A blurred movement out of the corner of my eye, followed by something heavy hitting me...

I regained my sense of hearing first and heard what sounded like an angry mob.

A blindfold was taken off of my eyes and after I adjusted to the light I saw that I was in a gymnasium…and a sell out crowd filled the stands.

I wasn’t the main attraction…not yet.

I sat on the aluminum bleachers. My feet and hands were not bound, but all of my weapons had been found and confiscated.

Two men were standing face to face in the middle of the gym.

The two men facing each other were concentration camp thin. Both had shaved heads. Both had in their bony hands, guns.

They looked like identical twins. Most likely it was lack of food that had reduced both of them to a basic common denominator.

With a certain ceremony, they bowed to one another.

The crowd became hushed.

The two men then turned and walked away from each other a certain number of steps, swung round and then fired.

One shot blew open the guys head like a watermelon thrown from a rooftop.

The other missed with a hiss and hit the concrete wall.

The man who survived dropped to his knees and began to weep, as the crowd began to cheer wildly.

The man then lifted up his gun, put it in his mouth and blew his own head off.

The crowd went crazy after that and rushed the floor.

I wished what I saw next was a nightmare…

Like mountain lions they attacked each corpse and began to tear and chew them up.

A feeding frenzy…and I began to vomit.

The stands were empty and I moved silently towards the door nearest me. 

I reached them, turned and tried to open but found them locked. I turned back round, and found every eye looking at me.

I screamed as they moved towards me. And fought them when they were near. But there was too many.

Again I lost consciousness and when I woke I found myself on a mattress in a small room.

I felt my body but found no teeth marks or pieces of flesh missing.

I felt my head and felt my hair missing.

I looked around and quickly found out that the only thing in the room was what was in front of me.

Piss bucket over a shit hole in the floor.

One small window…too high to reach.

3 items. One was a gun. Another was a plate and the third was a stapled pamphlet.

The gun was on the plate. I immediately thought of the men I had seen in the gym.

Shaved heads…wasted bodies and guns.

Looked like I was being groomed to be one of them.

I wondered how many others were in the building like me?

I picked up the pamphlet. It had a simple hand typed title…

PUBLIC DOMAIN

I opened the first page and began to read…

Ahhh, hello kind people…for I can see that twinkle in your eye. A few thoughts on madness and then we can begin. History is not just looking back over your shoulder…it’s an energy reproductive system. Just because it’s invisible or thought vanished doesn’t mean its atoms can’t be reformulated and turned into adams. For the sake of what’s happening here, let us look over our shoulder and…you see, my friends this is not the dueling of your past countrymen…with imagined insults and revengeful lustings pumping through their veins like howl mooning cats. No, No, this new breed of duelist is a careerist. Yes, yes there’s no need to act any different on the matter. It’s all in the marketing, in preparation for the regulars to one day notice. Successfully survive and not be killed, and you’ve got a chance to show those gorgeous teeth in a whitening commercial. It’s all very much about the money. I’m afraid you’ve gotten into this at the tail end. Sure when it first started out it had mystery, flair and the touch of poetics. Who would live and who would die was of course why one got into it. As for the reason you got into it? I’m assuming of course, but it was to give your life a bit of shaking up…no, yes, maybe?...better to go and drink a soda instead…I say.

All the duels begin to meld into one…though one with a tiny hamster with a little dagger and triangle branded onto his forehead sticks out a little bit. You keep doing it and sure you a get a rush but it’s not the same as the first time. Your motions go through the repetitive processes and it shortly becomes poor like a porno love affair. You want to call of the whole thing, but it’s so fucking surreal you don’t want  to stop. A merry go round surrender ride. I want to slow it all down. It needs to s….l….o…w…d….o….w….n…so…I shoot a bunch of my duels on film and watch them over and over. Experimentally masturbating to the duels I tape. This isn’t about creating a death in another. This is about creating a death in me. Rising sections up with phoenix like dragon throws. My trip?  Well, for starters the acid has been flushed out. It’s multiple months hence. Does that surprise you? That I’m sober and still dueling? It’s not the acid that wanted me to do this. It’s what my insides are creating merging the broken bits together until it comes out collage like where 2 plus 2 is no longer 4, but 666 and the moralistic high priests float blackness by and by and draw a bloody x on my door. Marking me like a beast. I broke out of that thought stream years ago. Trying to break out of this current mold of society and it’s wooly mammoth speak. These duels entertain the lynch mob until I can make that clean break. Don’t want shit festering up at the worst possible time. Dig?

I looked back over my shoulder at the closed elevator door and instantly forget. Front office lobby looks the same. Same fake ferns. Same faded landscape paintings. Same dreary air, same patchy light.  Check, check, check. But, I’m not the same as I make my way out. Push to open. That sticker mildly annoys me for some reason. Good. I need that extra edge like a Canadian figure skater destined to fall at the Olympics. I pass from the hard concrete path outside to the squish, squish of the springtime grass in the courtyard where office workers get back to nature. It’s no better than a funland at mcdonald’s…the shit they try and pass off on us. My eyes begin to open as my focus resolves. Squish, squish…must take note of my footwork amongst this sogginess. I dig into my pocket to retrieve my cherry flavoured chapstick. I don’t want anything on my mind at shooting time let alone a drifted thought that my lips feel dry. Should also make a mental note to give my hair a trim. Better yet, cut it all off. Romantic postcard of a back dropped duelist with hair blowing dramatically isn’t practical. Pretending to be a flower she bloomed into my opponent at the sound of my squishes. Performance art with a touch of duel is her gimmick….

The funny thing is that I can remember making love under this tree, and now many years later may die under this tree. There wasn’t a second, and no witness. I could get shot in the back, and know one would know of the injustice. If this was on tv the commentators would make a big deal about it. Bur for me it was a thought that had looped itself around my mind a couple of times like a snake around a branch of a tree, and this where my thought rested and lay. What concerned me more was the spaced out look in my opponents eyes. The kind of gaze where it looked as if he didn’t care if he lived or died. This meant that he would be relaxed when drawing and aiming his gun. Pure action and no thought. The purest way to duel. I myself, on the other hand felt a vague tremor in the depths of my heart, and that meant that a part of me didn’t want to duel and was scared to die. I suddenly wanted to call the whole thing off. Put the guns down, shake my opponents hand, and then climb up the limbs of the tree until I was high off the ground. But I knew he wouldn’t agree to that arrangement. In fact, I’m sure he would shoot me in the back without even thinking.

It was at that moment that the sun went into the tree, and the shadows that followed put a skull like mask onto my opponents face. Hollow eyes and a lipless grin nodded to me. We walked out the pre-arranged 10 steps, turned, and fired…I shattered his skull into a million pieces. Unharmed I climbed the tree and watched the sun set.

I put the book down…a fast read…a few pages in all.

I didn’t quit understand what it meant. A brief history of the modern day duel…a memoir of a dueler?

Was it supposed to inject some sort of feeling into the proceedings at hand? That I should feel proud to be part of this time honored tradition?

I had to get out of there, but how? I was in a cell of sorts. An inaccessible window, one door that never opened. They were trying to starve me and then with my last bit of strength I was to raise that gun and shoot….who?…I inspected the gun…one bullet…for myself?

How did they know I wouldn’t shoot the first one that entered into the room? Well, the next person would just shoot me, answered that question…

My mind went through the maze of every possible outcome, but it always ended up in the middle…I was going to have to take part in the duel.

They knew this, that’s why they left the bullet in the gun. They knew I wouldn’t use it on them. I would only use it on myself or to shoot the other dueler.

I re-read Public Domain over and over. I memorized it to keep my brain sharp…to keep it away from my stomach eating itself out.

I visualized myself dueling over and over in my head.

My mind drifted. I laughed at my finger, my finger inched along the ground in front of me like a worm.

I closed one eye and called it camera A and saw the finger from one perspective. I closed camera A and opened up camera B and got another perspective.

The finger worm was a natural entertainer. He told many a story and had many a joke. The finger worm kept me entertained for hours on end. It loved to gossip about the other fingers. And could mimic all the other fingers so well that I was left short of breath…laughing so hard.

I showed the finger worm the trigger of the gun. I let it feel the metal…had to get him used to it I thought. I took out the bullet and let it pull the trigger.

The finger worm grew bored of its jokes and its routines…grew silent and eventually went to sleep.

And so did I.

CHAPTER 3:

THE

DUEL

knowing how to free oneself is nothing; the difficult thing is knowing how to live with that freedom. – ANDRE GIDE FROM THE BOOK  “THE IMMORALIST”

That quote flickered like a neon sign in front of my eyes.

I had memorized it once upon a time and now it swam up from the depths of my unconsciousness.

I may have been a prisoner physically, but it was time I freed my mind.

I sat up and then pushed myself up against the wall and slouched into a meditation position.

Up until then my thoughts had been moving quickly, like a roller coaster it zipped around…up hills…down…around….always moving.

I needed to slow my mind down. Get off the roller coaster and go get some cotton candy.

Some time…minutes, hours or days…I’m not sure…when they entered into the room to get me, I was in that same position.

I may have looked physically weak, but my mind was a sharpened blade.

When the two men came to take me away I was ready.

I was physically too weak so they took my arms on either side and dragged me down the hallway.

The hallway had a crimson coloured worn, wall to wall rug. My feet dragged on it and I felt the burn.

I stayed with the pain until it dissolved.

We reached the stairs and my legs hit each step.

I stayed with the pain until it dissolved.

We went down to the last step and then through a door. We were in a basement section now. It felt damp and it was dark.

The men knew their way.

We twisted and turned until we banged through a set of double doors.

The strength of the light blinded my eyes.

I heard the roar of the crowd and knew I was back in the gym.

I was made to stand in the middle of the gym…and was made to hold my gun.

The men walked way. I felt the presence of the other dueler.

My mind wanted to be scared to die but I wouldn’t let it, because I wanted to live.

I looked into the eyes of my dueling partner. A woman with large blue eyes made even more prominent by her sunken cheeks and shaved head.

Her breasts sagged to a point in time.

My mind wanted to be sad but I wouldn’t let it.

I bowed and turned my back.

The time had come. The crowd hushed.

I threw my arms into the air and howled.

We paced the 8 paces away from each other.

I turned and told finger worm to pull the trigger.

It did as it was told and I felt the gunfire.

And that’s the last thing I can remember before…

CHAPTER 4:

FUCKING

WEIRD

SHIT

THE WORLD IS INDEED FULL OF FRIGHTENING THINGS AND WE ARE HELPLESS CREATURES SURROUNDED BY FORCES THAT ARE INEXPLICABLE AND UNBENDING. THE AVERAGE MAN, IN IGNORANCE, BELIEVES THAT THOSE FORCES CAN BE EXPLAINED OR CHANGED, HE DOESN’T REALLY KNOW HOW TO DO THAT, BUT HE EXPECTS THAT THE ACTIONS OF MANKIND WILL EXPLAIN THEM OR CHANGE THEM SOONER OR LATER. THE SORCERER, ON THE OTHER HAND, DOES NOT THINK OF EXPLAINING OR CHANGING THEM; INSTEAD HE LEARNS TO USE SUCH FORCES BY REDIRECTING HIMSELF AND ADAPTING TO THEIR DIRECTION. – DON JUAN

There was a savage, howling when I awoke and my cock felt sore like I’d been masturbating all day and my knuckles felt red like I’d punched through a doll.

When my eyes regained their composure and my head a bit of clarity, I saw that my knuckles had been tattooed with letters making up two words “last days”.

My dick felt raw cause I was naked and it looked like some kind of rodent had nibbled on it like it was corn on the cob.

I rubbed my hands over the dandruff on my head and took in the fact that I was in a room, but not the dueling white room I had been jailed in…this was a normal room, a kid’s room.

Sunlight peaked in under some half drawn blinds…an unmade bed, closet open showing scattered laundry, hung clothes and some board games on a shelf…posters of athletes on the walls…a desk with an unopened text book…a litter basket, shoes and a mini basketball on the floor.

I groaned and attempted to get up when movement caught my eye and I stopped and scanned the room…nothing…and then…from under the bed out scampered a small Teddy Bear hamster on all fours…it was then that I noticed the open cage door on the hamster pen by the bed.

Must’ve escaped somehow I thought, and began to get up to my feet.

An acid flashback later and I had a gun pointed in my face…

“What the fuck?” I said to the gun that was being held by the hamster that had flashed to a sitting position on my knee.

With no thought I swept my arm at the hamster, but he calmly leaped up into the air and landed back on my knee…dodging my attack with ease.

This was fucked up, but a change of tactics was required. If this hamster could hold a gun he could surely communicate.

“Why do you have a gun pointed at me?”

Because you’re the greatest dueler in the land.

“A form of telepathy?”

I challenge you to a duel?

“…and I decline.”

I’ll shoot you anyway, and then claim to be the best…I have no ethics.

“What...with that squirt gun?” I said and began to get up again.

The hamster back flipped off my knee and fired his gun. A green ray came out and hit my dick.

FUCK IT BURNED!

“What the fuck!” I yelled and grabbed my member. I realized why it was sore, not from any kind of fucking or jerking, but from this little fucker shooting off his ray gun.

I felt a sense of déjà vu and then the madness set in.

I accepted the invitation for the duel and we wrote up the terms of agreement.

He turned out to be quite the gentlemen. It seemed he was reincarnated…thought it would be funny to come back as a hamster. But when he came back the joke was funny for maybe half a day and then he realized it wasn’t going to work out to well for him. He began in earnest to communicate with the young boy who fed him and that’s when the world got fucked up.

And that’s when he stopped his story and ray gunned my dick…AGAIN!

Seering fucking pain and my dick started to look like some raw hamburger meat.

This little fuck face needed to be executed.

It was then that I saw my reflection in a body length mirror. Wow…Jesus fucking Christ looked better than me on his last days!

Speaking of which…hamster or not this could be my last day.

We walked through the empty house and into the backyard.

To my surprise there was a family sitting in lawn chairs. A mom and dad…a little girl and a littler boy.

Not to my surprise they were also all dead.

Didn’t take Einstein to figure on the theory that the little fuck killed them all and now had them set up in a perverse audience set up.

In front of me the hamster walked off his paces and I turned to walk off mine.

A twist…no guns were arranged…it was a duel of the mind.

I had no idea what he was talking about when we agreed, but thought I’d be able to react in time.

I still had no idea, when the hamster and I turned and faced each other.

A green triangle came out of his right ear and hit smack dab in the middle of my forehead like a vodka bottle falling on your head from a second story balcony.

I reacted by thinking of a unicorn charge at him.

He reacted poorly and the unicorn impaled him with its horn.

The unicorn disappeared and the hamster lay dead.

The family stared at me with dead fish eyed lenses.

I thought for a second they might get up and applaud…but they didn’t.

The sun filtered through a willow tree, and the backyard had a certain nostalgic feel to it.

I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. My entire life had changed. I felt I was in some sort of limbo world waiting to be reborn again. I needed to get grounded and then go from there.

Inside the house I managed to find some cans of beans and ate those. I found some cans of pineapples and ate those.

No electricity and no hot water. The family had plenty of candles and matches around and I lit one and went upstairs.

I rummaged around the dresser drawers and closets until I found some clothes.

The man was pretty hefty…tall and wide…I found out the wife was just my size.

I thought about wearing a dress, but then I thought some fuck would try and rape me.

Luckily she had a pair of olive cargo pants, a pair of hiking boots, a grey hoody and a navy blue windbreaker jacket.

I put the clothes on and then felt overwhelming fatigue. I fell onto the bed and into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER 5:

THE

WILE

E.

COYOTES

A strange, savage howling woke me up next.

I opened my eyes to a group of coyotes howling around the bed.

I curled up into the fetal position and screamed.

A hand touched my head, and stroked it soothingly like a mother to her baby would do.

I lifted my head to look and saw 6 coyotes.

Upon further observation it was 6 humans in the guise of a coyote.

They wore home made fur outfits and headdresses.

They ranged in age…5 males and one female it seemed like.

They all sat on the bed and looked at me.

I looked back. There faces were devoid of emotion and I realized they were wearing masks.

Plastic Wile E. Coyote masks from the old Road Runner cartoons.

They came close and sniffed my scent.

One even broke off and went to the corner, dropped his fur pants and took a shit on the carpet.

I didn’t say anything…didn’t say anything in principle because I didn’t think anything I said would be answered.

My mind was devoid of thought, save for the few little thought clouds that appeared and disappeared just as quickly.

We all sat quietly on the bed. The Wile E. Coyotes grooved themselves on one another. Some took out needles and thread and patched up pieces of fur or matched up hard to reach places on each other.

I was content on my side, partly feral…drifting in and out of sleep.

Once I woke up and a dead squirrel was in beside me.

One of the coyotes picked it up and snuck its tail and then skinned it. I could smell tokes of smoke coming from the bathroom, which was connected, to the bedroom we were in. I could see another coyote bend over the handtub and blow…scotch brown flames soon appeared.

The skinned and sinned squirrel was flicked up and brought to the fire.

A metal rod…sharp at one end, was stabbed through the gums of the squirrel and pushed out through the anus.

The coyote in charge of cooking sat with his mask off and cried as he slowly rotated the squirrel over the fire.

When it was ready it was chopped into pieces, put on a plate and served.

The plate was passed around a horn. I was offered an eyeball and accepted. I took the gesture as an invitation of their good intentions as I had heard squirrel eyes were quite tasty.

I propped it in my mouth and found it felt like grapes but when crunched…tasted like almonds.

The light in the room began to grow lighter.

An inaudible sound to my ears caused the others to attention.

They turned their faces to the side and listened.

Then they began to leave the room on all fours…one by one.

The last one turned around and offered its hand.

Without blinking I shook it.

Instead the coyote took it and led me out of the house and onto the front lawn. Scattered on the lawn were 6 bikes of smallish variety.

To my left, coming out of the woodwork was a coyote with a bigger variety of bike.

This was given to me.

Before we biked off the coyotes stood in a circle and let off a series of high pitched barks that sounded like a dog getting his balls squeezed.

It was the year of our death. Things like calendars, watches and alarm socks had no value anymore.

You moaned through the natural cycles now. Time moved through the moon, the sun and the stars. The calendar moved by the seasons. And alarm socks were the birds and the bees.

That is, only if you were free to move and listen to these things.

In the year of our death, the thing you heard most often was your heartbeat and what moved you…were your tears.

There were all sorts of foul and forbidden things afoot.

There were things that oozed and boozed…but who gives an A, B OR C about all that? You think about those things though…say, after a poke of ass…you start getting all…start reciting old timey poets and say shit “like humans aren’t all that sad.”

The sober reality is a different kind of glue and the spectator blends into the shadows or mimics someone that they used to know.

Time scatters like aftershave lotion on a motley cru of drug abusers.

What I meant to say was…she washed my dick tenderly. I was aroused. She applied an ointment to the sores caused by the ray gun from the hamster.

After that I ate out her pussy…I couldn’t tell how much she liked it, because she still had her Wile E. Coyote mask on.

After, I went and stood outside.

The moon had a noose around it, and I wondered when it would tighten and the moon would sigh.

And I wondered if it mattered if the moon sighed.

I guessed that the earth would continue on…at some point people would tell stories about the moon and then the moon would come back to life once again.

The moon outside had a noose around it, or so I thought as I took a piss on the graffiti souped wall of the building I was living in with the pack of wild coyotes.

No words were spoken and that was fine by me. We all had suffered, so there was no sense of adding on to one another’s shame.

The wily coyotes took shape in an abandoned bookstore. The books were all gone, most were used to start choirs or as toilet paper…some pages however, were stuck to the walls.

…Henry Miller, Lenny Bruce, Charles Manson…eclectic pages articulating a person’s existence at that time.

Other words were spray painted…gory markings like pissing for territory.

On this night the coyotes were cleaning their guns in preparation for their next duel.

I was given some silver cutlery and accepted…they gave me a mask and I put it on…being welcomed into their group felt like family for the first time in a while.

We biked under puff pastry like sky conditions. The suns rays ripped open our bodies and we lived like atoms for a little while.

Entering the high school football field, we got off our bikes and waked up to the 50-yard line.

The bleachers were filled with people. Some had binoculars and others had signs. A spectacle was to be had.

We lined up like barbed wire…10 feet or so apart…a murder of crows flew in…humans under the guise of crows…like us coyotes…we all had guns and we stood facing each other…coyotes vs. crows in a duel to the death…

We howled and the crows flew in little circles.

We all stopped…silence…turned and walked our paces…turned and looked into each others faces…and fired…

I blew my opponent’s head off its neck…his Blake feathers floated to the ground.

The end result was that 2 coyotes died and 3 crows likewise…we victors mourned.

Not enemies now…we burned the dead side by side in a cemetery connected to a little church.

We then celebrated life and death by digging up coffins and then drinking the decomposed liquid from the dead bodies.

Coffin liquor they caller Id’d it…it’ll make you wish you were another head after you partake…but for the first little while you felt like you could fucking drive!

The high from the duel was a great aphrodisiac and the fuck after was akin to being in good shape.

When we fucked I kept my coyote mask on. It now felt like my natural face.

The next day we needed a break and went from the bookstore to the forest…a tree house had been built and we lived there for a period of time.

After the period of time, we decided from a vote, to continue on…but in our own separate realities.

Some continued on as coyotes and others took off their mask and fur and became other people or animals for a while.

CHAPTER 6:

GIFTS

OF GORE

AND SHOTS

OF WHISKEY

I went off my own way and found my way back to The Rulers in the city that I had left. I re-joined the Safety and Security outfit that I had been previously wearing…it was good…a lot of pats on the back…when I got back. And a medal ceremony for my courage and bravery…with gifts of gore and shots of whiskey.

The city that I was part of at this time was a controlled safety zone…walls, barbed wire, and armed guards kept the perimeters secured. The surviving population lived within the perimeters, inside apartment complexes and large department stores. Any and all lawn or green space was turned into gardens. Limited electricity meant daylight hours were crucial to get the chores of the day done. Food, clothing and shelter were taken care of…spiritual and intellectual means were funneled through the New Church.

Access beyond the wall was prohibited for safety and security reasons.

Anyway, nobody wanted out and those that did were labeled treasonous and were killed and usually eaten.

The only ones allowed past the wall were people like me, which gave me a certain perception on the world that others didn’t see.

The people were ants in a maze, made to see that they weren’t ants in a maze…and that’s where the Ministry of Truth came into play.

They handed out serums and wove tapestries.

Myths and legends were addressed to the ink wells.

Performances and gossiping whispers…fingers that pointed behind the backs of those that put their laundry up to dry on clotheslines that were at the end of their ropes.

Testimonials and madmen posed as town cryers.

The old age gumption of whom does toll the bell was added to soups cooked in big iron cauldrons.

Dead feces and dead treats were boiled and poured out into bite sized rations…enough to appease the status quo…enough to quench the thirst of man.

Witches with doomsticks patrolled the hallways as little families huddled around each other, praying for the light.

In the park you couldn’t see what was right and that’s when your choices were poor, fatigue, undernourished…glimpses here and there of what was beyond the wall…for some it was too much and they hung themselves from the pipes in the basement…children would find them and scavenge what they could for tea time. Adults would find them and take their mojos and then take a pee.

Letters for the dead would arrive in the mail boxes and teenagers would take them and read them to one another…sipping on their homemade nettle beer and forgetting after awhile that they had come from a different place…where brake pads used to rock them to sleep on their knees in front of the tv.

The sky was always gutter sludge grey it seemed…some even whispered that those in the New Church had engineered such a thing for they impeached how in heaven it was always a shiny sun. And on the days it was sunny, even though there weren’t many of those, it was always a hazy sort of sun. The preachers would make you pay for that sun…a preview they said, of what was to come.

It was all a bunch of bat shit, to keep the citizens sick. Easy to bed…easy to sleep. I played the game too though, cause I was also sick.

Safety and Security the SS we were called…and I was always on call. I got ordered to head out beyond the wall, to a place called “Blood Island”. I was told nothing other than the usual company line of bringing “safety and security to those in need.” Reading between the lines I knew expansion was on their minds.

Things were under control in the city and it was now time to open the umbrella a little more to block out the sky some more.

It was a solo mission. I was to travel undercover and get as much information that I could and then report back.

Blood Island…according to the map would take 10 days to reach.

I moved on horseback and when my horse died I moved on foot.

My mind began to churn...

The New Church said we were God’s chosen…the earth was made just for us. The plants and the animals were made for us. The trees and the fish in the sea were made for us. God had provided and would continue to bribe.

Duels were considered illegal in the city of Dog Shit…of course they were…everything was pretty much illegal…didn’t mean they didn’t happen though.

Within the dueling world a similar philosophy to the New Church’s resided. Whoever won a duel had been chosen by God to continue. Everything then, that that person did was justified…until the next duel. And if that same person was killed then the actions leading up to the duel were sinful and the death was justified.

The New Church was spreading its seas…trees were falling, animals consumed and 1,000-acre farms began to be drawn up.

God will collide…and if not here on this planet, then into another one.

The New Church pew was spreading higher and higher.

I felt it sore over my head, and block out most of the sky.

I dropped to my knees and prayed. I prayed that I am the chosen one…that my life was pure and just…that my quest was in line with my God and therefore with my society.

I preyed that my mission to Blood Island was successful and that I would return alive.

Did I believe any of it…any of what I just said? Maybe…maybe I was fooling myself…thinking that if I straddled the fence that I would be freer than the next person…I don’t know.

I stopped thinking and just walked…

Concrete underneath my feet…cracked up…no one around to patch it up. No resources either. No raw materials or the time and energy.

I stopped for a rest under a tall cylinder tree and took a swig from my canteen. Refilled it in a nearby creek that ran next to me.

My mind began to burn…

Think I want to be free like those asleep behind the wheel in the New Society’s walls?

Seeing the world through the New Churches eyes?

They see what they see and I see what I see. And I see myself walking down a road…free…no sounds other than from this creek, from that chipmunk and those birds.

I’m still on this earth though. And this earth may very well be a prison with some guards that I can’t see watching me.

We’ll see what happens after I multiply. And the realization that it can happen at anytime makes me appreciate napkins even more!

ENOUGH!

I took out my map and figured I was a day’s walk to Blood Island…

The Happy Gang, Killer Christ, Black Cloud, Ice Surfers, Cousin Vinny, Chick with a Stick, Wendy hawk, Sadie Sue, Ice Queen, Heavenly Kid, 24 hr Woody, Sickly Seniors, Pink Flamingo, The Mad Cows, Bangers and Mash, Apple Man, Spring Fever, Sausage Links, Dangerous Darren, Little Beer Belly Man, Edward Devil Hands…

…all known duelers…gangs of duelers…the tip of the iceberg…all of which have residue on Blood Island.

CHAPTER 7:

BEAT

BEETHOVEN

What does the future have in store for us? Each of our futures contains those very relationships we have found challenging, the unfinished business we have continued to put off until tomorrow, and the same difficulties we have repeatedly overlooked or refused to deal with. At the same time, our future will include the almost unfathomable realization of our deep connection to god. Even now, the Akashic records are continually molding and shaping our enfolding tomorrows so that these things come to pass. With complete objectivity and flawless precision, the universes supercomputer system is in the process of downloading those very circumstances and events which will perfectly enable all individuals to arrive at their destiny. It’s simply a matter our free will how long it will take us to get there. – EDGAR CAYCE FROM THE BOOK “EDGAR CAYCE AND THE AKASHIC RECORDS”

For the most part I kept off the main roads.

Dead bodies with holes in them turned up every now and then.

Home made cemeteries with whole families in them.

It was a hard time to survive and most didn’t, and that’s how dueling became a kid again.

For the most part rules and proper conduct were followed, unless you came across some sadistic fuck.

People still had healthy egos, and there was nothing healthier for your ego then walking away from a duel.

Gave you a little bit of life for a while.

A slight drizzle as I bent and stuck my finger into a dead guys bullet hole. A ruler shot…straight through the forehead. Whoever did this was feeling good.

Turned on, I felt my dick grow stiff. Took it out and worked my way into that bullet hole. Felt the bullet an inch in…good enough…enough for me to get off on.

When I was done I wiped the cum off my dickhead and then wiped it on some tree bark.

The dead man’s eyes looked at me. I looked right back. He was wearing a suit and tie. Must’ve been coming from the city. Was he a dueler or a clean shaver forced into something he was way over his head with?

Bet he didn’t think when he got ready that morning he’d end up dead and getting fucked in the head?

Even so it was strange in these times to see a man in a suit and tie. No more stock markets, no more businesses and cubicles and all that condensation.

I got up and looked around.  Smelled…and then began to walk through the woods.

I heard a river up ahead and so I approached with amen.

My hearing was minimal so I turned to my other senses…which included looking at the hairs on the back of my hand.

When I got to the river there were more dead bodies along the rocky shore. I made my way down. 3 more men in suit and ties…all bled. All shot through the head. I checked through their pockets and came up empty.

I felt for my gun that was in its holster around my waist.

I felt re-assured and my nose twitched the air like a rabbit searching for the predator.

4 dead…maybe more.

The river was too big to cross so I began to walk along the shore, which would take me back to the road.

The other way would lead me towards the ocean, away from Blood Island.

Which was tempting, even more of an unknown…throw a monkey wrench into my planned destiny.

I stopped and sat on a rounded rock and began to constipate. My thoughts dissolved. I noticed the light drizzle of shame on my face. I heard the water of the river. I heard the crows calling each other brother.

I saw leaves in miniature. Fall was coming soon.

But I dissolved those thoughts and sent my senses away to stand guard and to not let anyone in…especially my ego.

For while the other duelers used their ego to feed their edge, I knew it was because they were afraid of death. And I didn’t want that. I believed life had more things to be afraid of.

And so I sat by the river and watched.

A tent across the river…abandoned?

Rain stopped.

Pale, yellow sun through grey clouds.

Dead body bloating by…bobbing up and down like a big boob running.

Movement behind me?

Stomach grumbled in hunger.

How much more will my rationed food last me?...will I die of starvation…dissolve

Seagull flees by.

Torn cloth on blackberry thorn…who’s?

Shadows of grey becoming darker…dusk soon…where will I camp for the night?...here?...or should I get back to the road and walk some more?...dissolve

Air temperature dropping.

I got up and jerked off into the river, a sign of respect in my disintegrating mind.

Time to move.

I got off the river and headed into the blackberry bush paths…overgrown here and there, but mostly still clear…which meant people came through here regularly…I pulled off the path and into the woods a bit for another pee…I spotted another dead body and exchanged clothes with it…I felt too conspicuous in my Safety and Security uniform of camouflaged chocolate…someone would challenge me just on the basis of it…someone would challenge me anyway…regardless of my clothes.

The guy was pretty much my size…jean jacket and denim pants…I saw an eagle feather and stuck it in the shoelace of one of my leather boots…in my backpack I had my rain gear, my fishing rod and some rations.

Figured I’d go a bit more and camp before the…I stopped when I heard the music…symphony…Beethoven sounds, delight.

Immediately I’m suspicious…thinking trap…but that’s a pretty obscure bait to throw out there. Luring someone in with classical music in the middle of nowhere at night…whoever it was they felt it was safe enough to play out loud…still risky…but worth a dice roll.

Once upon a time entered into my mind as I moved closer to the area where the music came from…

I stalked through the path, keeping low. I detected movement and stopped my breath…let go my thoughts and let myself and my dentures be open…the music came from off the path to my right…I parted the bushes and bit until I could see a glimpse of the scene….

A mist had come with the dusk making what I saw before me a dreamy one filled with ghosts…people…each with an instrument…an orchestra with a conductor…turning pages to find the next song they would perform…just ahead of me a triangle like woman, maybe 20 or so, delicate, white like porcelain, began to softly play the piano…the others all tuned to listen…perhaps 15 other musicians…violins, tubas, harps…etc…a woman in a dark rose coloured evening gown appeared next to the piano and began to sing in such a haunting voice that chills ran up my spine…my throat was dry and I was frozen in that crotch, watching and listening with my entire being…tears began to fall out of the sky…this beauty…was still there, it was still in us…the mist snickered and then the darkness…the voice and piano became fainter and fainter until I strained to hear it and then I disappeared…

I awoke the next morning in the same spot, curled up in a fetal position. I shivered and got to my feet. It was another cloudy, ashy day…but at least it had stayed warm thru the night.

I carefully made my way through the thorny branches and got to where the people were last night…but not a soul was there, not a trace. But, when I closed my eyes, I could see them…and I could hear a faint whisper of Beethoven.

I drank some water and took out my fishing rod. I went down to the river as the sun began to brown out the clouds.

I took off my damp clothes and dried them out on the rocks and fished naked.

I caught a couple of rainbow trout…by the time I came out it was afternoon and my clothes were dry. I went back into the woods and made a small fire. Stuck the fish through a thick branch and cooked it up.

I packed up and left without a trace. As I walked through the blackberry bush trails I could hear whispers…talking…giggling…laughing…swirling…all around me…enough to drive one mad…but I wasn’t mad, in fact I was feeling pretty good.

I got back to the main road and took a look…

Not a ghoul around. Not a ghoul to be found.

CHAPTER 8:

DAVID

I came upon a wooden bridge.

No problem, I’d cross the bridge and then I’d head back into the woods.

I started thinking about trolls under bridges…and then remembered that if you thought about things too much they would come true…so I tried to stop…but couldn’t stop thinking about trolls under bridges…hopefully there wasn’t a troll lurking under the bridge…though I did take that into account as a possible variable as I walked across…and…well I’ll be dipped…if out it from the other end came a fucking troll!

Met it halfway across…turned out not to be a troll but a mutant of sorts. Lumps and ill conceived bone angles…head down by its shoulder, laid out sideways looking at me…legs, one longer than the other one, causing it to limp and drag…bulging biceps for arms…small wrists and then big hands.

Born from something ultraviolet…born from something more fright than gone…but there it came…my face began to twitch…I was aware and stopped it.

The thing didn’t stop until it got close enough where I could see that it couldn’t see…it’s eyes were sewn shut…one large ear faced upwards…receiving like a satellite dish.

Its skin was green wax like vomit milk…it’s mouth moved and it began to seek.

“I stand before you, horribly informed…and from all appearances a monster in the flesh…but I am no monster…and nor do I wish to be viewed as one…I was told to meet you on this bridge…at this time and this day…I was told and I have come. My name is David…an ordinary piece of chewing gum in a extra ordinary time…but it was the name given to me at my birth and so that is my name…my parents and family are all bled…buried on Blood Island…I have survived these times…due to luck, my deformity and my ability find the back of a man’s head with a bullet…that is my story.”

“You wish then to have a duel then, David?”

“I do not, sir.”

“Then what?”

“The chimes told me differently…I was told to become your second.”

“An honourable position, but I do not need one.”

“I was told…”

“…by the chimes?”

“Yes.”

“I am not going to Blood Island to duel, though if I have to, I will.”

“Nevertheless for reasons unexplained we were meant to be aligned.”

David put one giant hand forward and we shook hands in agreement.

“Very well, David...I am open to your chimes.”

I didn’t know what the fuck these chimes were all about or what the fuck David was at all…but if an entity comes in peace and wishes to help, I’m not one to spit in its place.

We walked across the bridge and down the road hand in hand.

The sun was high in the sky and I felt exposed walking for so long on the road, but I kept my mind empty and my heart open.

David moved slow with his limp and drag walk. There was no perspiration.

He wore nothing. No screws on his neck or feet, and nothing covered his exposed giant penis.

He had a canvas shoulder bag in which he took out an occasional dead frog and ate it. He offered me one but I declined.

He grunted and wheezed as he moved. His body worked hard in its struggle to move.

For hours we walked until he put his arm in front of my chest and we came to a stop.

The sun was setting in front of us. Trees were dense on both sides, making a tunnel of sorts.

He sniffed the air.

“We need to get off the road, now.”

I followed him into the dense woods. He was feeling one tree and then the next…an old poke tree with many knotted limbs seemed to take his interest the most.

“We climb this one,” David said and then with surprising agility began to climb upwards. I followed until we were near the top of the tree and had a view of the road.

I heard the dogs before I saw them. Sounded like dozens of them as they came to where we once stood on the road and stopped.

They seemed to be of one creed…viscous looking…partly hyena and party goblin.

We watched as they circled around…sniffing the ground and the air.

“We are safe, they won’t come into the woods.”

CHAPTER 9:

VALLEY

OF THE

CHIMES

“Dreams?”
“Yes, but not the ones you have at night; the kind of dreams when you imagine your future, what you hope to come true.”
“And?”
“It’s been occurring to me that they are very important…but I’m not talking about trying to make them into reality: just having them.”
I tilt my head.
“Once you make your dream into actuality, the dream itself ceases to exist. But if you stay in the world of your dream, your imagination can expand and expand. That’s a characteristic of the dream. If you are always stuck in reality, your thinking doesn’t spread out and grow in the same way.” Then he adds, somewhat poetically, “because, as for reality, there is but one. On the other hand, though,” he says, “if you stay in your imagination all the time, soon your dream doesn’t work anymore because dreams need reality as nutrients. Without nutrients, animals and plants die, and if the nourishment for your dreams runs out, the world of the dream gets smaller and smaller and eventually dies. So you need both: dream and reality, imagination and actuality. Thus you have to talk to all kinds of people, look at many kinds of plants, eat all kinds of things to make your imagination new, to keep that interior world fresh. Then your own world can expand and grow. – gufu watanabe from the book a different kind of luxury by andy couturier

8 days later we entered into the Valley of the Chimes.

David led the whole way and I never once asked where we were going or how long it was going to take to get there.

I didn’t care, I considered myself to be free and therefore timeless.

You couldn’t see the valley until you were about to fall into it.

Picking your way down like a mountain goat you came to the bottom.

A sort of Garden of Eden waited…if you survived the descent.

A small river cut its way through the middle of the valley.

Maybe an acre or two if you were to think in agricultural terms.

A lushness made it past tense and alive.

Birds…bees collecting…migrating and fluctuating.

Branches and leaves, stinging nettle and thick vines looking like sardines that snaked their way through trunks and red necked trees, the type I had never envisioned before.

A moth eaten blanketed the sky…holes spread the sunshine.

Underneath one of those holes David lived in a mold home.

“Built it myself…took some time but I managed it,” he said with a satisfied chin as he rattled the doorknob open. The inside was dark and muscly…like the crotch of an elephant.

He asked me inside, but the smell repelled me and I shook my head and waited until he came back outside and then watched as he wrapped his penis around his waist like a belt.

“Let’s go…up there,” he pointed.

I followed his finger up a tree to a little house at the top.

The tree was massive. I wanted to give it a hug but it was too wide. I gave it a pat instead.

The tree looked real. It was sometimes hard to tell until closer inspection. Artificial trees were made to replace real trees that were cut down in the once upon a time days. Real trees were needed to capture the carbon dioxide and halt global warming. So someone invented fake trees to do the same job, and some tree harvesting company bought his idea and replanted billions of these artificial trees into the ground with machines. Birds and tree planters didn’t like the deal, but who gives a fuck about them anyway?

Anyway, this one seemed real as I climbed up to the top.

Up, up, up…and then through the bottom floor of a tree house.

David closed the floor door after I climbed in.

I looked around.

The first thing I heard when I came awake was chimes…and then the wind.

I opened my eyes and saw a queer sight before me.

A snake…a cobra…inches from my face.

I pulled back reflexively and reached for my gun but felt nothing but my naked flesh.

I scrabbled into the corner of that tree house in the sky.

A queer sight still…David in a trance sitting in the lotus position. I watched as his penis unraveled into the form of a cobra.

The cobra began to communicate.

Now, it’s slightly unnerving to wake up and have a giant penis that resembles a cobra an inch from your face.

But, you take what the good lord provides is whey they used to say.

Whether it was a real cobra or not, I didn’t want a taste of what it had to offer.

The cobra penis swayed before me and I soon fell into a sort of hypnosis.

The cobra began to communicate in symbols…tree angles and other sshapes came out of it and entered into my mind…zodiac signs and ancient symbols…I felt part of my brain processing and memorizing so that it could be culled forth at a later time.

The cobra penis stopped swaying and began to retract back into David’s scrotum sack…the scrotum sack pulled itself through a slit…the slit erased itself until there was nothing but pale flesh…genderless.

The hypnosis wore off and I sat up feeling a crunk in my neck and began to try and massage the knot out. My head tilted to the side. It mimicked the way David’s tilted to his side. I wondered if he needed a massage?

I heard the chimes just as I was about to speak and so I listened.

I got up and went to one of the tree house windows and looked out.

We were high in the sky. Clouds came into the window and out through another window. Four windows in all…windows without glass…my balls began to tingle as I realized how far off the ground we were…I remembered an old story my mom used to tell me…jack and the dill stock…

The wind picked up and what sounded like a million chimes dissolved my body into sound waves.

With no physical body I could go anywhere in the universe.

And I did.

I merged with other similar sound vibrations on the planet we called Jupiter.

They told me they were busy creating the conditions in which humans would be burned into next…furthering the evolution of this human earthly incarnation.

Heavier vibrations would have to stay behind on earth and become solid…mountains and rocks.

“Be light

See light”

They told me.

I left Jupiter and bounced around a meteor shower like a game of kick the stones.

I felt the need to return to earth and into the vessel of my current incarnation.

Returning into my body I blinked and turned away from the window frame and back into my reality.

David opened the floor hatch and gestured for me to climb down.

I went over and looked.

The tree was back to its regular height. My balls stopped tingling and I climbed back down to the ground.

I waited for David to climb down.

“Would you like a cup of chi?” He asked.

My throat suddenly collapsed and I croaked out “please.”

We walked to the dwelling I had first encountered. This time we went around to the back of the house.

“This is my chi time garden,” he said sweeping his arm so that I could take it all in…

The waterfall caught my eye first…the blueness of the lake next…a large bountiful garden of many plants…food growing…the multicoloured birds that resembled peasants…hedges of cream…a labyrinth of stone walkways….

I breathed out deeply. An inner peace and tranquility washed over me. A feeling that was alien to me. I was used to my paranoia, my hyper awareness…my quick trigger.

A circular table with an umbrella in the middle to shade the sun and two lawn chairs were in front of me.

“Please have a seat…I scavenged those items for days like today.”

I sat down and closed my blinds. I felt safe for the first time in…I don’t know…I let my heart parachute off the cliff.

I took in the sounds that I heard…refusing to label them…just letting them wash over me.

“The reality that you know is only the tip of the iceberg as they used to say,” David said coming back and placing a tray down onto the table…two small handless green mugs were on it. “Please take one…prepared from love from the garden here.”

I took a cup and blew into it.

I took a sip and swallowed.

Multiple flavour combinations flooded my senses…citrus…peppermint…chocolate…there was nothing disagreeable and I quickly drank all of it.

Surprisingly my wrist was quenched and I required no more.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked looking over at David who was sipping from his cup and staring off into the distance.

“May I ask you a question?” He said without answering my question.

“Go ahead.”

“What if I were to tell you that you were dead?”

“I would say you were wrong…I am very much alive.”

“Perhaps you are merely under the illusion of being alive.”

“My senses are telling me otherwise…I can see this beauty before me…I can hear those birds…taste this chi…”

“And you assume you couldn’t do that if you were dead…may I ask your name?”

“I don’t know”

“How is it that you don’t know?”

“Well, I don’t know my real name…I don’t know what you’re asking me…because I don’t know what it means to be dead…you lose your body that you were born into, grow old with…you see others die and never see them again.”

“What if I told you that the domain in which you are familiar with is no longer?”

“No longer?”

“It’s no longer because you are here in this realm just like when you were in the tree house, the chimes took you to other realms. Do you remember what the chimes told you?”

“To be light, to see light.”

“And what do you think that means?”

The sky became tinged with mouthwash and one side was the moon and on the other the night.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you wish to know?”

“Yes, no…I don’t know…you’re fucking my mind up David…I thought you were sent to me, to act as my second?”

Suddenly, a huge mist blew in front of me…and I couldn’t see…a force rammed into me and drove me back…

…in time…I fell…light blinded me…white light…heat surrounded me…I floated…light …be the light…I floated...and fell…but light…I fell…I touched…earth…ground…I looked…and saw the light…the sun…I saw...…I am back…grounded…I am back on earth…I looked around…I am on the road again…the road to Blood Island……am I dead…or am I alive…is yet to be determined…

I moved forward out of curiosity to investigate further…to see where the road led…to see the other side…I began to walk…

CHAPTER 10:

FUCKING

PIGS

They came out of the forest from all directions like I knew they would.

Guns drawn and pointed at me they advanced.

I raised my hands in an act of surrender.

They circled around me and sniffed.

Their faces were hidden masks made of pig feces…snorted…beady black eyes…hollow pointed bullets…I could see no caring or love in those eyes…only hunger.

I didn’t give off the scent of tears, because if they wanted to, they could’ve killed me right away.

I was assuming they wanted me for something else as they bound me…as they blindfolded me…hands together…and my feet the same…they tied me to a long bamboo rod and 4 of the little pigs lifted me off the ground. Two in front, two behind and carried me forward.

We went off the road and back into the forest.

I stayed light and tried to see the light thru the blindfold.

I thought of David and where he went…I thought of the planet Jupiter.

The pigs stank.

I wondered what perversity they had planned for me.

What sort of sick duel they had thought up to go along with their perception of the world.

It didn’t matter what they had planned…I would kill them all.

But, that wasn’t to be, as from all directions…loud crow cawing sounds erupted.

The pigs squealed.

I was dropped heavily to the ground.

Gunshots fired from all around me.

Screams…and then silence.

I waited but no one came for me.

I waited some more.

I spent a tireless amount freezing myself from my bonds.

I removed the blindshield.

Black feathers and pig shit…blood…bullet holes and death…

24 bodies in all…12 pigs…12 crows…

All dead…I removed all the masks to reveal their faces…I recognized no one.

I wondered where they went to…if they were more alive than dead now.

No need to scavenge for bullets, guns, clothes, accessories…

I wanted no gun

I wanted nothing but the clothes on me.

I would be provided.

CHAPTER 11:

JUDAS

LYNCH

HUG

I DON’T NECESSARILY LOVE ROTTING BODIES, BUT THERE’S A TEXTURE TO A ROTTING BODY THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A LITTLE ROTTED ANIMAL? I LOVE LOOKING AT THOSE THINGS, JUST AS MUCH AS I LIKE TO LOOK AT A CLOSE UP OF SOME TREE BARK, OR A SMALL BUG, OR A CUP OF COFFEE, OR A PIECE OF PIE. YOU GET IN CLOSE AND THE TEXTURES ARE WONDERFUL – DAVID LYNCH.

“What you’ve got is a bad case of the Jesus Christ complex my friend…I should know…I was just like you.”

It was a chunk of time later and I was in a small roadside eatery on the outskirts of Blood Island. Suburbs had replaced the forest. Abandoned homes. Gated communities of people…protective…afraid…grouping together like herds of animals…still didn’t stop them from killing each other.

I wandered down the road unarmed and open…even took off the shoes on my feet.

My mind was clear…light…I felt like I could float. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead.

However, that didn’t stop my stomach from growling.

That’s when the sign caught my eye.

“Rudolf’s all you can eat Jukebox and Casino”

The sign was framed by unplugged Christmas lights…faded…paint peeled…had seen better days.

It was still open though. So I took it as a sign and went in.

Dark and dank…I adjusted my eyes, my feet felt sticky, like I was stepping on blood, pigs, puke…probably was.

I moved intuitively into a space in the corner. I sat down and looked around.

People either sleeping or dead were in chairs, slumped on the table, leaning against the wall, or had fallen on the floor. Others…the alive ones were eating meals that looked far from appetizing.

The alive ones were dressed in their school uniforms, their gang colours,…their masks. I noticed some crows pecking with their beaks at some kind of ribbed meat. I saw a couple of pigs…I wondered if they knew they had just butchered each other…saw some dogs…bears…snakes…bats….even saw a regular human face or two.

The place was silent except for the feeding sounds.

That’s why I jumped when the voice next to me emerged out of the shadows and began to speak.

“What you’ve got is a bad case of the Jesus Christ complex my friend, I should know…I was just like you.”

“And now you are?”

“Judas to your Christ of course.”

I reached out my hand and he surprised me by kissing it.

Two huge black eyes like a vampire…bore into me.

In fact, all I could make out of Judas was his eyes…they seemed to float in the blackness.

“On your way to Blood Island to become the best dueler in all the land…ain’t that right J.C.?”

“I have my reasons,” I stated economically.

“Hey Manfred, the man’s hungry here!...bring a couple big macs and a pair of those titty mugs,” Judas barked.

A sweaty bald headed man with a lagred black beard, came out of the back with two plates of what looked to be hashed potatoes, cream of corn, and a chunk of bone and two mugs with breasts on them filled with foam. He threw them down, gave a hard stare to Judas and went around to the other tables to clean up.

“House specialty, bon appetite,” Judas said as his hands floated out…grabbed a fork and started to eat, white teeth grinded and chewed.

I tentatively tasted…bland…with a hint of bad…but would do the job…we ate in silence…seemed to be the rule and I was okay with that…felt unsure and a bit off balance since coming into the place.

“You from the city, J.C.?” Judas said and then belched…satisfied.

I pushed my plate away, half eaten and took a gulp of beer.

“Yeah.”

“Safety and Security.”

“How did you know?”

“Cause I was too.”

“They sent you here?”

“2 years ago…supposed to gather what information I could and report back…except I never did.”

“You stayed…why?”

“A man has his reasons J.C, and every man has his own cause and effects. Let’s get out of here, I’ll take you back to my place...fill you in with my life story on the way.”

“And why should I trust you, considering you’re my Judas?”

“Because you have no other choice…you walk back out that door unarmed and these animals in here will follow you out and fight over your remains…but if you go out with me, they won’t touch you.”

I felt unsure…I wasn’t able to properly tell if he was lying or not. My intuition was gone and my mind was spinning.

Judas was right…I had no other choice.

We stepped outside and the brightness robbed my eyes of sight.

I adjusted and saw a very large, hulk of a man standing in front of me.

He wore a heavy beige onesy outfit made from canvas. High black leather boots…a belt with 2 guns, a hunting knife, compass and handcuffs…a pockmarked face with a heavy goatee and long brown hair in a ponytail.

“Let me show you around,” he said and began to walk away quickly.

I followed.

“We’ll stay in the alleyways…not that much safer, but better chances of finding a place to get away…you see when I first came here I was covered in blood…people stayed away from me after that…partly how I got my Christ complex…the rest was dream sequences, numerology, and superstition…but it was mostly when I got shot through the heart during a duel and not only survived but the fucking chicks loved it…I was some sort of guru…started up a little commune…a gated area where we grew a shit load of food and fucked a lot…I was the only man…or so I thought, one of the ladies turned out to be a man and tried to cut my throat during a coup d’état…cocksucker got away…I worked it to my advantage and sent out rumours that I had been killed and was subsequently resurrected…heady times…king fucking Midas…must’ve sired 20-30 kids by then…50 or so wives…became a pretty good gardener too…enjoyed growing flowers that had a nice fragrance…if I had it my way I would’ve stayed in that garden…world’s fucked up right now…lay low and wait for shit to calm down a bit and then stick my head out and look around…but like the Buddha said life and suffering walk hand in hand and I was tossed out of that garden.”

He spat on the ground and looked up into the sky.

“Got a feeling…more than a feeling…we should lay low for awhile, c’mon.”

I followed…climbed over barbed wire fences…barking dogs…we climbed a tree and looked around…smoke from homes was growing clouds in the navy blue sky.

“People burn what they could…mostly burning homes from the inside out and then moving on…the suburbs man…don’t trust these fucking people…all loaded to the teeth…all with their own language…code knocks…people training cats, dogs, even fucking cockroaches to bring messages to others…people move at night…eyes used to the dark more than the light now…like fucking raccoons…scavenging…some hunt…they’ll shoot you and eat you…in fact…a human life ain’t worth shit now…better off being a hamster…you meet someone you don’t know square on in one of these backyards or alleyways…and it’s automatic duel…but these fuckers are shady…they got a second hiding somewhere that’ll shoot you before you do your paces…you can say it ain’t fair…but you’ll be saying it from the next realm…I trained all my kids and wives in the fine art of dueling…and they were good too…shoot an apple right off your head blindfolded while you fry up some eggs, no word of a lie…but like I said…I got tossed out of the garden…a story for another campfire…let’s go.”

We climbed back down the tree…hopped a fence…backyard had a dead man, still fresh…Judas took off his shoes and handed them to me…they had Velcro and were a bit tight, but they did the job.

Darkness began to set its table…we ran into some hedges and Judas pointed to a sewer grate…he stepped out and sprinted…he removed the grate and waved me over…I climbed down the ladder and he followed closing up the grate…darkness…he struck a match and lit a torch that was on a wall…the torch light was strong…we moved down the sewage drain…running left and right and then straight for some time…at last we came to a door…he pulled out a set of keys and put one into the lock and turned…it clicked and he pushed the door open…closed the door behind me and hung up the torch on the wall next to the door.

The small room became illuminated…bookshelves filled with books…musical instruments…a small cook stove…a kitchen nook with pots, pans, utensils and jars with spices and lentils and beans…I took this in with a few glances…and then settled onto Judas moving around…lighting a small fire… a small bed with sleeping bags in one corner…a blow up doll on the bed.

“I know” when he saw me notice it, “from 50 wives to a fuck doll!” Judas took off his belt and hung it on a hook on the wall…sat on a car tire and took off his shoes…he stripped out of his onesy, threw it on the bed and put on a thick lumber jacket…red and green checkered…and then some comfy cotton pants.

“Ah, that’s more like it, to tell you the truth I wish I never had to go outside again, and you’re lucky we were destined to meet J.C.…wouldn’t have made it out of there alive, you know.”

“I would’ve if I was dead.”

Judas looked at me a moment and then laughed…undid his ponytail and shook it out like a shampoo commercial.

He parted his legs and reached into the car tire…he pulled out a large canning jar…a clear liquid was poured out into two plastic cups…one with Mickey Mouse and mine with Minnie Mouse on it.

I took a sip and choked and sputtered…it felt as if I swallowed fire.

“Home made goodness right there J.C….warms the coldest of cocks,” he said taking a shot of it.

I wasn’t sure what was true or false with Judas. I didn’t know if he was a nut job or not and one wrong question could be my death sentence.

“Listen J.C….do me a favour and put your right hand into your pants and grab a hold of your manhood for me?”

I did what he wanted and at my touch my cock immediately grew hard.

“Got a little hard didn’t it? Now when you’re dead, your dick don’t got any wood in it…matter of fact, when you’re dead your dick can turn into a cunt and your cunt can turn into nothing.”

“David…” I said.

“Who?”

“Just a guy I met.”

“Did he have a dick and a cunt?”

“He did.”

“He was dead then…there’s a lot of fucked up shit right now J.C….that’s why they sent me and you and others like us to get some of this info and report back…but I’ll tell you this too…free of charge…there is no going back…two possible moves then,” he said taking another slug of fire, “you move sideways or you move forward.”

“Which way have you gone?”

“To be honest I got scared…didn’t want to move…anywhere…so I tried to create an island unto myself as they used to say…but that didn’t work…no fortress walls are strong enough for what we are up against.”

“Which is?”

“The Bloodiest Island you’ve ever been on.”

CHAPTER 12:

I LOVE

DUELLING

We humans are used to saying things about death such as, ‘when I die and pass over into the next world; thinking that the phenomenal world and the spiritual world are separate. We use the term ‘over there’. But they are not separate. There is no ‘over there.’ ‘over there is right here. There is no other world. It is not a transition from living to death, not from one thing to another. You are still connected to everything. We exist in the midst of eternity all the time. – masaanori oe  from the book a different kind of luxury by andy couturier

“If I’m not dead,” I said to him as I looked at the bridge heading through the clouds to Blood Island, “then this is all a dream?”

“You better quite this jerking off J.C. and get some fucking edge back or you’re going to know these answers very soon! You don’t got your shit together by the time you get over that bridge and you’re fucked up the ass boy.”

“Well, I’ve got a few more minutes before then don’t I?”

It was early and I was grumpy. The sun was just above the horizon, burning big and orange.

There was a green tea stand selling tea and souvenirs. I walked over.

I bought a ceramic mug that said, I love dueling and got a free mug of green tea with it. Judas didn’t get anything and told me green tea was for pussies. He reminded me of me. The way I used to be.

“Did you see how that guy serving you looked at me?” Judas said while he finger fucked the trigger on his holstered gun. “I should challenge him and blow his fucking head off…Jesus I’m tense…I can’t believe you talked me into going over to that fucking island.”

“You took me as a sign, and signed up,” I said taking a sip of some gunpowder green.

“I know, I know, I just gotta calm down a bit…you’re right, let’s go sit under that Bodhi tree over there.”

We walked over and sat. The tree was large and looked like it needed a hug and maybe a kiss with some open tongue.

“I remember in another life,” Judas said almost reading my mind about tree hugging, “I worked as a tree planter. And I’m not joking, but the guy that was running our team would drop his pants every morning and stick his dick into a tree and fuck it until he came…said it was good luck.…that the tree spirits would help us plant lots of trees that day…can you fucking believe that?”

“Was it good luck?” I asked leaning back against the tree.

“Matter of fact it was.”

I finished up my green tea just as we finished up that enlightened conversation about tree fucking.

I got to my feet and helped Judas get to his.

“J.C.?”

“Yep.”

Judas looked into my eyes deeply. I looked back with love.

“Things are pretty fucked up aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you said that…now it’s my destiny to challenge you to a duel to the death.”

“On the basis of what?” I asked and looked at him with some disbelief.

“Because I’m Judas…because I don’t want to go over to that island…because I’ll shoot you if you don’t duel…do you accept?”

“Fuck you, Judas.”

The air was crisp, the wind was calm and the sun was not in my eyes but off to the side.

My scrotum was tight and my teeth were clenched.

We paced and spun…lightning in a tin can…electric currents hardwired…hydro lines from old times…sticking your finger into a light socket…ZAP-KERPANG…hairy triggers…and the repetitions from duels past counteract any nerves or anxieties…doubts or questions…

I shot Judas in the neck…I could hear the gurgling of the blood in his throat…whether he died from the bullet or from choking on his blood, I didn’t know.

I walked over and checked his gun…all the bullets were still in the chamber…he hadn’t even fired.

I sat down and looked at the sun change outfits from orange to pinstripes, and watched the sky return a pair of ripe coconuts for peaches.

I sat on the grass, my legs out in front of me. I watched an ant on his journey through time.

I tore off some dandelion leaves and chewed on them, dormant memory from a basic survival textbook on how to live off the land.

A raven landed on top of a tree and sounded the call to its family and friends that fresh meat was to be had.

I stripped him of everything I needed, kept the gun that he loaned me for the duel, took all the bullets he had, took his belt and his boots…lowered my head…gave the sign of the father, son and the holy ghost…got up and began to walk toward the bridge…

CHAPTER 13:

BLOOD

ISLAND

When I got to the bridge the tollbooth laid vacant…I half expected a pile of dead bodies…my imagination.

The bridge climbed into a smooth arc that went into the clouds that had formed…big grey clouds that were bottom heavy…black assed rain clouds.

It took a length of time that wasn’t measured anymore…how many minutes or blimps passed I didn’t know.

I stopped at the top of the bridge…a rainbow had formed…it began only steps in front of me and ended on the other side…

I didn’t take this as a sign or an amen…just a natural phenomenon that took place…and that I was grateful to see.

I practiced my death walk meditation that I was also taught as part of my basic training to be able to stay present during any and all types of situations…this was important from the Safety and Security position.

I began to think that when I got to the other side the apocalypse would be going strong…dead bodies, fires, gunshots, screams, a high pitched energy…smells of decaying flesh…nightmares…a hell realm basically.

I began to feel flu symptoms…dull aches in my head and body…tightening of the throat…

…knew I should’ve had a chamomile tea back at the green tea stand…but no…duelers gotta get gunpowder green tea…stupid fucking image to uphold…last thing I needed was to head onto Blood Island with the fucking flu.

I stopped and looked back…should I go back?

Fuck that…

That world was dead to me, so I carried on…near the bottom of the bridge…the clouds parted and I saw the island…it stretched off into the horizon…long…big cliffs, with sandy beaches at the bottom, dense green trees and vegetation at the bottom…a dirt road stretched straight before me…I walked onto Blood Island…finger on the trigger…tense…ready for anything…

…but nothing came…the sun was out, strong…a small creek ran parallel…I tasted it…it seemed okay…so I drank… carried on…ready for an ambush…dusty road from lack of rain…the trees dense…thicker than on the other side…thick like old growth ecosystems…I imagined eyes and guns all on me…

…but nothing happened…nowhere…nobody to be seen…

…I walked all day and then slept…made a bed out of cedar branches…the night was warm and clear…I used cedar branches as my blanket as well…good for camouflage.

I woke up sick…my body ached…it was hot…so I went to the creek and drank…then went back to sleep.

I drifted in and out of delirium…hot and freezing cold…

…I let go…I didn’t care if I lived or died at that moment…I heard a voice and then hands…I didn’t care…I was picked up…I didn’t feel a thing…I blacked out.

When I came to…I was in front of a woodstove…the flames were hot.

I reached for my gun, but there was none. My mind flashed back to the white room and how my dueling life began…killing to survive.

A soft hand touched my shoulder and I lay back down.

A soft voice told me I was okay.

Water was poured into a cup, I sat up…took the cup and sipped…I was thirsty…and slurped the rest quickly.

I passed the cup back to a woman who was dressed in earth colours…her face showed love and she embodied a warmth equal to that of the fire in the woodstove.

She smiled and turned away, washing the cup in the makeshift sink…the water came from a wooden container.

I groped around for my gun.

“You won’t be needing what you’re looking for here anymore,” a man said. I turned around and a heavily bearded man was playing chess with a boy of around 12. The boy looked at me for a few seconds and then took his concentration back to the chess set.

“My son here is the best chess player in all the land, nobody can beat him…do you play?”

“I know how, I guess,” I said and wondered if this was some sort of dueling foreplay.

“Come take a walk with me,” the man said getting up.

“John…” the woman questioned.

“He’s better now, the virus has passed,” the man named John replied.

“I do feel better,” I said and rose up into a sitting position.

“It’ll do him some good to get outside,” John said and put on a leather buckskin jacket…a pair of rubber boots went on his feet and then he waited by the cabin door.

The cabin was small, cozy…one room…outhouse outside…I got up…I wore a full length long john outfit so John tossed me a pair of jeans with a belt already on it…I put them on and tightened the belt…I had lost some weight. He threw me a wool sweater and offered me a pair of rubber boots…we went outside.

It was early evening…dusk…purple…chalky blue…late fall…mosquitos all gone…the sound of the forest all around…we walked down a path that started in a clearing…walked across a small bridge…creek water below… we walked on a few minutes more and came across a large trail running north to south is what I was told…we headed south…there was nobody on the trail but us…we walked slowly…large, wild thimbleberry bushes on either side…

“What am I doing here?”

“You can call me John…you walked here…but you collapsed back the other way on this same trail…my son found you, came and got me and we carried you home.”

My head began to pound, and I rubbed at my temples.

“Headache?”

“Yeah.”

“My wife’s got a remedy.”

The thimbleberry’s gave way and opened up to a grand view of the ocean. My thoughts of aches and pains stopped for a moment.

John touched my shoulder and pointed.

Out in the sky a mama eagle was teaching her baby to fly.

I smiled…felt strange to be doing so on Blood Island.

“What’s going on here, John?”

“In general or do you mean something more specific?”

“Are we going to duel or not? That’s what you’ve brought me here for?”

“You’ve been hurt, but you will heal…the wound will scab …it will leave a scar…a reminder.”

“We are on Blood Island aren’t we?”

“Let’s head back, I’ll take you to meet the others and your questions can get some answers and the answers can then create new questions.”

After, a snack of bannock…Sparrow, John’s wife, gave me a warm cup of feverfew tea…she introduced me to their sun Blueberry or Blu for short.

“It’s strange to not have a name isn’t it John?” Sparrow said to her husband as we were sitting at the wooden table finishing up our tea…wooden plates, wooden utensils, wooden cups…I looked around and didn’t see much in the way of plastic.

“Well, depends on where you’re coming from…some people have numbers or symbols instead of names, some have the name of a sound or a finger sign.”

“Why don’t you have a name?” Blu asked me outright. His large blue eyes, accentuated by his short hair.

“I don’t know why, I think I used to…but I can’t remember…it was never really important because I felt like…I was going to die at any moment…well…I…let’s just say I can’t remember.”

“You looked like or I should say, the name that came into my head when I first saw you was William,” said Sparrow thoughtfully.

“Hmm, William that sounds…nice…”

“…Brown,” Blu said, “he looks like the colour brown.”

“William Brown,” John said and chuckled into his beard. “How does that name sound to you?”

“Sounds like home to me,” I said and meant it. I felt the warmth of a mother’s hug and of the love of a father’s smile. It felt good. It felt like a new lamb. It felt like fleece.

Later on we walked by lantern light to a big bonfire.

A full circle of people ringed the fire.

Chanting was taking place and John, Sparrow and Blu joined in.

The words were unintelligible but I was moved.

Tears fell as I stared into the fire. I didn’t know what was going on but it felt…

…I felt.

After the chanting a man began to speak.

He wore a large white fur type jacket that seemed to reflect colours from the fire…oranges, reds and yellows…hypnotic.

His eyes were large and black. Black holes, that radiated planetary energies.

I listened carefully to the words that he spoke but after, I couldn’t remember a single thing that he said.

The next morning I awoke to an empty cabin.

A note on the table said they’d gone to gather wood and to help myself to the pancakes that they had made that morning.

I ate…satisfied…I walked around the cabin…observing and thinking…

…strange objects like from dreams entered into my consciousness…

the radiant one would like to talk to you said the large pinkish crystal when I touched it.

Hmm…was the crystal talking to me?...I dismissed it as further evidence of a mind in transition…

I grabbed ahold of a wooden bow…carved by hand…and arrows…also made by hand…bird feathers on the end…sharp metal on the other…bamboo in between…a leather bag to hold the dozen arrows.

Windows of various sizes but not enough to take away from the coziness…close up views of trees and long views of ocean horizon…shelves with herbal plants growing…and getting the light needed to change into food…

I went over to the woodpile, took a piece and put it into the stove…maneuvered it around with a poker so it got onto some hot coals…everything had its use it seemed…including a small shelf of books…old how to manuals on how to garden or live off the land…well used books…

Everything made or used by hand…slow…my pulse rate had slowed since arriving…I sat down and stared out one of the windows.

I rocked back and forth in the old rocker…watching rain clouds in the distance move closer.

I guess I had dozed off when the family had come back in…old reflexes kicked in and I jumped up and spun around…trying to grab a non existent gun from a non existent holster…the family huddled together…scared.

“I’m sorry…I…” I dropped my head and felt guilty having brought fear into such a peaceful home.

“Old habits take time to disappear,” John said coming over and hugging me. Unused to being hugged my arms stayed at their sides, but my head fell into his shoulder nook.

“Did you receive our transmission to you William?” Sparrow said staring forcefully into my eyes.

“I…I don’t think so…” and then I remembered the crystal. “…the radiant one would like to speak to me.”

John and Sparrow look at each other and smiled.

“Who is the radiant one?”

“He is the one that spoke at the fire last night, I will take you to him now, William…it may be of some importance to do so.”

CHAPTER 14:

FUCKING

TREE

HUGGERS

VISITOR: is there a death?SWAMIJI: a death of this manifestation, yes. But life continues. Life is eternal. Live your incarnation and, I pray, with nonviolence. But be careful – you might be dead already.

We entered into the tipi after a long walk…the sun was gone and a new moon had replaced it…a chill…a briskness, was in the air…winter’s whisper that it was on its way.

The inside of the tipi was warm…a fire pit in the middle had hot coals with steam pouring out…I couldn’t see very well and my eyes burned…I turned but couldn’t see John…I became disoriented and stumbled around…afraid I’d fall into the hot coals, I stopped and kneeled down…I rubbed my eyes…when I opened them I could see…below the smoke there was a clear vantage point of a few feet…a raven…radiating multiple fluorescent colours...pecking at a dead human carcass…it stopped…tilted it’s head and looked at me…it then shape shifted into the man from the bonfire…

“Welcome William Brown, I’ve been waiting for you,” he said and clapped his hands three times, which made the entire environment change.

Witnesses later told me that we had never left the tent.

But, we did and I have the scars to prove it.

We were on a busy downtown city street. I didn’t know what city it was. I didn’t recognize anything.

I was standing in a duel position in front of Radiant Raven.

All traffic had stopped and a large group of people formed a circle around us.

The day was bright and it was warm.

My lips felt dry like I needed chapstick, like they needed a good pick. Pick the dead skin off, but don’t pick too much or else it’ll bleed.

The wind picked up and I felt it through my long hair.

Long hair? I’ve never had long hair…was this really me? It felt like me, but without a mirror I couldn’t be too sure.

The Radiated Raven reached and fired as I was contemplating stupid shit like chapstick and long hair.

I felt the bullet hit…my face exploded.

Blood poured.

One of my eyeballs watched from the ground.

Radiant Raven came over and stepped on my eye and it all went black.

I woke up in the tipi. The smoke had cleared and Radiant Raven looked to be eating ribs.

He looked up at me and laughed. The laugh was kind and I felt at ease.

I asked him what happened…why…

But he cut me off with a thunderclap.

He pointed towards the entrance and waved bye.

I got up and opened the tipi flap.

Hundreds of people were standing and waiting in front of the tipi and when they saw me they all dropped to their hands and knees in prayer position.

Far from feeling egotistical at my high ranking, I felt confused.

The people got to their feet and approached me. They soon overwhelmed me, touching me. Feeling me. My clothes were taken off…they grabbed my penis…stuck fingers into my ass and my mouth…poked, prodded, caressed…I began to scream.

The sea of humans parted down the middle.

A woman walked down towards me. I was breathing heavily.

She approached and stopped in front of me. In her arms was a cloak and she wrapped it around me. Pulling the hood over my head. She took my hand and we walked away from the rest of the people.

We came to a small domed building, with glass windows on the top section, and went inside. She took off my cloak and she hers.

She led me to a bed lined with soft white fur. We lay down together and began to make love, without violence.

Afterwards, we lay in each other’s arms. She fell asleep and I stared at her face.

She was young, with freckles.

I stayed awake trying to put together the events since arriving to Blood Island.

It was nothing like I had imagined. Like nothing anyone had told me.

Why?

There was no blood on this island, no guns, no duels.

Why?

I didn’t understand.

A purr like sound entered into my head, feline…feminine sounding…it slowed down my whys until sleep came and took me away.

During the sleep I felt like a group of beings, like little fish with suckers were kissing me all over…it was pleasant so I didn’t try and knock them off…I wasn’t alarmed.

I awoke the next morning with the woman mounting me. I ejaculated and gave her everything that was inside of me. My mind, body and soul….my DNA…my life.

Her name was Harvest. And soon we were married. We stayed inside all winter long. I grew a beard and began to write a book about my dueling experiences. Harvest was soon pregnant.

We didn’t talk out loud a lot, because she taught me about ESP, which demanded a lot of eye contact.

We stayed inside a lot but she also taught me how to astral travel and to awaken into lucid dreaming.

We met people and had experiences, from all over the universe.

By the spring I was a different man.

Before the baby was to be born, we journeyed all around the island.

The island itself was like one big community.

But it was divided and run by sections.

The people that lived along the coast…fished.

The people inland tended to farms.

There were people that lived in the trees.

And people that lived underground.

There were community’s based on arts and hand made crafts…music, painting and pottery.

There were community’s that were spiritual, focusing on the evolution of their spirit and making connection with other realms.

There were pockets of this, that and the other.

There was no such thing as money or rich or poor people.

Good sound services were exchanged.

If someone fell sick or one community fell on hard times for one reason or another, people from other community’s would come and help for a period of time.

Young and old, all lived amongst each other…different races of people and people of all abilities including people with disabilities…were all integrated.

Every year a gathering from the island tribes would be held. It would rotate from community to community every year.

It seemed like a utopia but it was just normal life.

That first summer I joined the tree huggers. Before every tree we cut down, we knocked on the tree to tell the tree spirits that we would be using their tree to help heat the community. We would hug the tree and tell the tree thank you. Then we would knock the tree down by handsaw. Cut it up by hand and then haul it back by backpacks.

It was hard work, but it had meaning…value.

CHAPTER 15:

THE

STRANGER

“Of what use is wealth if I must conform to customs that are as meaningless to me as they are obstructive of my true inclinations and desires?” – noah blake  from the book cities of the red night by William s. burroughs

You had to face each other to communicate mind to mind.

You had to stare at each other until your faces blended…until the eyes became one big eye…

…and then you saw.

It was like anything, it took practice.

Low percentages at first…I was probably operating at slightly better than 50% after 6 months.

Keep your mind blank at first and then open it up…learn to decipher what your thoughts were as the receiver and what the senders are…

Life was good. At a nice even keel as they used to say. Fuck, I even took up water colouring. Harvest told me she could see the future in them. Others told me they were portals, connecting to other realms.

The day our daughter was born was also the day the Stranger arrived over the bridge.

The beginning of the end.

Phoenix Rain was our baby. She told us her name in a dream.

I drew a series of watercolours on the day she was born and they foretold…they told…

…they showed…the gun…the duel…the stranger…the strangers…the fire…the screams…the silence…the wind…the trees…the hanged man…

…I burned those pictures before anyone could see…prophecy…

I sat in Radiant Ravens tipi…he told me that “they had created the illusion of Blood Island…and sent it out as a defensive shield…let people see what they wanted to see…let them see death and guns…let them all see it together…if they all see it, then it has to be real.”

“How many have come over here, come over the bridge, broken through the illusion?”

“Maybe one per year cut through the illusion…maybe none.”

“And when they get here they don’t want to use their guns anymore? They don’t want to duel?”

“Did you?”

“I wanted peace…but someone will come over that bridge one day and won’t be at peace, and will want to use that gun…and I think that time is coming Radiant one.”

“Enjoy your new baby William Brown and we’ll deal with one day when it comes.”

The Stranger came over the bridge and was unseen by everyone.

I was losing focus…short term memory had gone to shit….my beard was long, my hair was longer.

Details like these were becoming vague, dreamlike.

Old fears of being dead began to resurface.

Harvest kept asking what was wrong, but I couldn’t say anything and blocked my mind from her probes.

My watercolours became darker and darker.

Dark bleds and darker facts.

Nobody seemed to see the Stranger but me.

People began to look at me strange.

The Stranger was dapper. Black suit, with long coat tails, top hat, vest…pinstriped pants with crease…and shined shoes…all black…everything black…he twirled his mustache right off when he talked to me.

He told me that, “he was going to shoot Harvest and my baby, and then me…after he was going to go back over the bridge and tell everyone what was really going on…a bunch of pacifists…Blood Island?...more like pussy island!”

I couldn’t speak…tried to read his mind…he entered mine and told me to fuck off.

“Enjoy your baby William Brown,” Radiant Raven had said.

I warned him. I warned everybody.

John took me for a walk to the bluffs…I wanted to jump off…my mind was flickering…images were juxtaposing.

I told him about the Stranger and he didn’t believe me. I didn’t have to read his mind…I could see it in his eyes.

I was going to have to kill him myself.

I went home and made love to Harvest. I passed her more of my seed. Would I be there to…would I…

Who was I anyway? I felt like I had been so many people in my life.

I began to see the Stranger more and more, he was close to my home, he was in my home, I could see him watching while I played with my girl, while I made love to my wife.

He wanted life. And I soon wanted his.

I approached him and challenged him to a duel.

He accepted.

In one week….sunset…on the cliff…the highest point on the island.

That week I blocked my mind as well as I could so no one would figure out…I wrote out my life story… and a letter to Harvest and Phoenix…

I had a gun…the Stranger had given it to me.

I hid it in the forest.

I trained…got mentally ready, physically ready.

I tapped into anger and violence…punched trees until my hands bled…dunked my head into the river until I almost blacked out.

The safety and security of everyone on the island depended on me.

The moment came, I told Harvest that I had to go and see Radiant Raven…left my home, my wife and daughter.

One last look…my life…my love.

The Stranger was already there. The sun was a big blood orange. The wind was strong.

The stranger twirled his eyelids. I nodded and we took our places.

We took our paces.

Spun.

Fired.

My bullet went right through him.

His bullet went right through me.

He smiled and disappeared.

His point proved.

I turned and watched the sun until it disappeared.

I threw my gun off the cliff and watched it die.

I walked back home in the dark…moonlight acted as a flashlight.

Harvest was at the door, holding Phoenix. She had read my letter, my story. She hugged me as I cried.

She told me to close my eyes and remember.

“Remember what it meant to be a human being…what it meant to make love…what it meant to look into my baby’s eyes. Remember what it meant or else you will float away…remember like an anchor or you will float away into a dream and every time you wake up you will be another human in another life…every time you go to sleep you’ll travel further and further away…remember me…remember me or I will disappear…”

CHAPTER 16:

ENJOY

YOUR

LAST

DAYS

Harvest…

Phoenix…

Enjoy your baby William Brown…

I challenge you to a duel…

I reacted by thinking of a unicorn and then having it charge at him…

A strange, savage howling woke me up next…

Blood Island…

The best dueler in all the land…

I didn’t quit understand what it meant. A brief history of the modern day duel?…a memoir of a dueler?

In the year of something or other, I was sent by my Rulers to the Secret Wars that were happening in each and every border city…

I loved to walk over to the person I had just shot and stick my finger in the bullet hole, pull it out and smell it…

David…

What if I were to tell you that you were dead?

Chimes…

Be the light

See the light

Judas…

What you’ve got is a bad case of the Jesus Christ complex my friend…I should know…I was just like you…

I want to tell you about something that you don’t know…

Places that you’ve never seen…

People that you’ve never met…

I saw that my knuckles had been tattooed with letters making up two words…last days…

My mind wanted to be scared to die but I wouldn’t let it, because I wanted to live….

Remember…

Remember…

Remember…

Later, after the birth of my son, I left the island…I stood at the top of the bridge…I looked back at the island and looked forward to the mainland…

I was going to make my way all the way back to where I began…back through the outskirts and back into the city.

My myth my legend would move quickly from dueler to dueler…I would be the greatest dueler that ever lived…the one that made it back from Blood Island…I would tell all that would listen how desperate…and how dangerous it was on Blood Island…I was the only one that had ever made it back over the bridge…barely made it back over that bridge.

I wanted to keep the illusion about Blood Island…keep the reality of Blood Island safe…for awhile longer at any rate…keep my children safe, so that they could grow and become harbingers for change…

I would return one day.

In one form or other.

I would return.

And every night as I laid my head down to go to sleep…I would remember.

And every time I pulled the trigger…I would remember.

Who am I?

That’s easy…

The greatest fucking dueler that ever lived…

SAVAGE,

HOLLOW

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