Curse of the White Salamander! All the stuff that makes America cool: guns, cigarettes, cults, Elvis, the CIA, Soviets, wizards, pro wrestling, ninjas, and Mormon Eldritch beings!
Celebrate what it means to be an American by spending money and staying inside!
Buy it today! And buy the sequel too!
A light tapping on the rainfly coaxed me from sleep. Small animal, maybe a mouse, on the roof. Maybe the gentle beginnings of a mountain rain. My eyes blinked, closed again, then reopened, too dark to make a difference. The gentle patter stopped, and I turned in my bag to return to sleep, when the sound of ripping nylon from the door of the tent froze me in place.
“Wha-” Jack exclaimed beside me, half choking in sleep, before I felt his bag’s friction against mine, felt him move in his cocoon, and felt him ripped through the hole in the tent.
“ENNIS!” He yelled, panic mashed with fear and bewilderment. He yelled again, an incoherent scream over the sound of crackling dried grass and rocks, the sound carried away with him.
I sat up, desperately fumbling for a headlamp, a flashlight, something, but it was dark, so terribly dark, and my trembling hands plodded empty space on the tent’s floor and Jack’s sleeping pad, still warm from his body heat.
“NO NO NO!” His voice, awake now, fully awake, pleading and high pitched, “ENNI-” and he screamed. I’ll never forget that scream, I’ll never stop hearing that scream, it fills my ears in moments of silence, and the last few moments of wake, it accompanies the alarm clock first thing in the morning, and the dull thu-thunk of the Netflix screen, of my car’s seat belt warning, and my manager’s disappointed tones. How it grew, high terror, to pain, dropping octaves mid-note, becoming wet, expulsionary. Animal. And then the sound of meat ripping. Of tissues of muscle and sinew and bone torn, like ripping a flap of a nylon tent.
And then it was silent. So still outside. So peaceful. The night unaware, or uncaring of what had happened.
What had happened? Thin mountain air filled my lungs, drawn by rapid and shallow breaths, desperate to feed a heart running at wind sprint speed. But I held my breath, willing the pounding my ears to silence itself, yearning for any sound, any input.
“Ja…Jack?” My shout barely whispered from the back of my throat.
“HA HA!” From somewhere around Jack’s direction. Mockingly playful.
“Hey-” I began, but interrupted. A hiss of air of something traveling toward me, something thrown or flying. The something hit me squarely in the chest, lightly.
My legs kicked in my bag, mind frozen on what it was, images of spiders, or bats, rabid squirrels, snakes, filling my heat, and I kicked, feeling the bursting zipper of the bag, and I wiggled and thrashed, squirming to get free.
Hiss. Thwack.
A light impact, this time on my forehead, and I felt the almost feathery sharpness of whatever it was.
“HA HA!” Again from Jack’s location.
Hiss. Thwack.
Another impact in the darkness against my chest. And more laughter, turning to a giggle in the distance. I felt the object fall into my lap, and I grabbed it, prepared to crush it, or cast it away before it could bite or claw or sting me. My hand wrapped around it and…
A pine cone? My other hand joined the first, rolling it between them, feeling the ridges and sharp tips, the folds.
“Jack? This isn’t funny!” I yelled. Confusion adding to the fear.
“AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!” Belly laughter, eye watering.
I dropped the pine cone and felt for a light source. Hands and knees on the floor of the tent, feeling through my ruined sleeping bag and my pack, my boots.
Thwack.
Without warning, something heavy flew through the air and hit me on the shoulder. Too heavy for a pine cone, soft, yet pointy. It landed like a wet mop and dropped to my hand below me. Without thinking, I grabbed it, my fingers wrapping around cooling dead fingers. A rubber wedding ring around one of them. A thumb, and palm, and a wrist wet with blood and exposed muscle and a shattered bone. Jack. Oh my god, Jack.
“HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAH!” Gasping cackles, uncontrolled joy from outside.
I bolted to my feet and rushed through the torn opening of the tent, blind to the night, I turned the direction of the laughter and ran. Ran barefoot over rocks, and sticks, ran into subalpine fir branches, and into small animal holes. The laughter continued. Laughing, laughing, mocking, amusing joy. So dark. So dark tonight, I thought, no moon, no stars, no North Star to guide me, so dark.
I felt the ground descend, felt elevation change pitch downward, and my leg slipped, tumbling down, falling, then rolling.
“HAHAH HAHA HAHAH HAAAAAAAAA!” Rolling inhales and exhales, elation.
A bowl of a big Doug Fir halted my roll and I struggled to breathe, wind knocked out, keenly aware of a hundred cuts in my feet, or perhaps one big one, of my arms and back scraped by rocks, and dirt embedded into my skin.
And the laughter stopped. From the center of the edges of the horizon, the dark faded, stars appearing one by one, as if a sheet was being pulled away, a curtain lifted. Moonlight. Trees below me. Dozens of ridges in front of me in the distance. The song of crickets and a gentle night breeze.
Elk hunters found me the next morning. I'd made it ten miles from our camp, barefoot and in only boxers, dehydrated, sick from blood loss and madness, holding only Jack’s hand for explanation.
I told you all that, so I can say this. It’s taken me time to get over this, therapy, pills, drink, but the more time I tell the story, the more people I let know about it, the funnier it gets, you know? Jack’s final scream, hehe, you know, something you look back, and haha, laugh about.
A light tapping on the rainfly coaxed me from sleep. Small animal, maybe a mouse, on the roof. Maybe the gentle beginnings of a mountain rain. My eyes blinked, closed again, then reopened, too dark to make a difference. The gentle patter stopped, and I turned in my bag to return to sleep, when the sound of ripping nylon from the door of the tent froze me in place.
“Wha-” Jack exclaimed beside me, half choking in sleep, before I felt his bag’s friction against mine, felt him move in his cocoon, and felt him ripped through the hole in the tent.
“ENNIS!” He yelled, panic mashed with fear and bewilderment. He yelled again, an incoherent scream over the sound of crackling dried grass and rocks, the sound carried away with him.
I sat up, desperately fumbling for a headlamp, a flashlight, something, but it was dark, so terribly dark, and my trembling hands plodded empty space on the tent’s floor and Jack’s sleeping pad, still warm from his body heat.
“NO NO NO!” His voice, awake now, fully awake, pleading and high pitched, “ENNI-” and he screamed. I’ll never forget that scream, I’ll never stop hearing that scream, it fills my ears in moments of silence, and the last few moments of wake, it accompanies the alarm clock first thing in the morning, and the dull thu-thunk of the Netflix screen, of my car’s seat belt warning, and my manager’s disappointed tones. How it grew, high terror, to pain, dropping octaves mid-note, becoming wet, expulsionary. Animal. And then the sound of meat ripping. Of tissues of muscle and sinew and bone torn, like ripping a flap of a nylon tent.
And then it was silent. So still outside. So peaceful. The night unaware, or uncaring of what had happened.
What had happened? Thin mountain air filled my lungs, drawn by rapid and shallow breaths, desperate to feed a heart running at wind sprint speed. But I held my breath, willing the pounding my ears to silence itself, yearning for any sound, any input.
“Ja…Jack?” My shout barely whispered from the back of my throat.
“HA HA!” From somewhere around Jack’s direction. Mockingly playful.
“Hey-” I began, but interrupted. A hiss of air of something traveling toward me, something thrown or flying. The something hit me squarely in the chest, lightly.
My legs kicked in my bag, mind frozen on what it was, images of spiders, or bats, rabid squirrels, snakes, filling my heat, and I kicked, feeling the bursting zipper of the bag, and I wiggled and thrashed, squirming to get free.
Hiss. Thwack.
A light impact, this time on my forehead, and I felt the almost feathery sharpness of whatever it was.
“HA HA!” Again from Jack’s location.
Hiss. Thwack.
Another impact in the darkness against my chest. And more laughter, turning to a giggle in the distance. I felt the object fall into my lap, and I grabbed it, prepared to crush it, or cast it away before it could bite or claw or sting me. My hand wrapped around it and…
A pine cone? My other hand joined the first, rolling it between them, feeling the ridges and sharp tips, the folds.
“Jack? This isn’t funny!” I yelled. Confusion adding to the fear.
“AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!” Belly laughter, eye watering.
I dropped the pine cone and felt for a light source. Hands and knees on the floor of the tent, feeling through my ruined sleeping bag and my pack, my boots.
Thwack.
Without warning, something heavy flew through the air and hit me on the shoulder. Too heavy for a pine cone, soft, yet pointy. It landed like a wet mop and dropped to my hand below me. Without thinking, I grabbed it, my fingers wrapping around cooling dead fingers. A rubber wedding ring around one of them. A thumb, and palm, and a wrist wet with blood and exposed muscle and a shattered bone. Jack. Oh my god, Jack.
“HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAH!” Gasping cackles, uncontrolled joy from outside.
I bolted to my feet and rushed through the torn opening of the tent, blind to the night, I turned the direction of the laughter and ran. Ran barefoot over rocks, and sticks, ran into subalpine fir branches, and into small animal holes. The laughter continued. Laughing, laughing, mocking, amusing joy. So dark. So dark tonight, I thought, no moon, no stars, no North Star to guide me, so dark.
I felt the ground descend, felt elevation change pitch downward, and my leg slipped, tumbling down, falling, then rolling.
“HAHAH HAHA HAHAH HAAAAAAAAA!” Rolling inhales and exhales, elation.
A bowl of a big Doug Fir halted my roll and I struggled to breathe, wind knocked out, keenly aware of a hundred cuts in my feet, or perhaps one big one, of my arms and back scraped by rocks, and dirt embedded into my skin.
And the laughter stopped. From the center of the edges of the horizon, the dark faded, stars appearing one by one, as if a sheet was being pulled away, a curtain lifted. Moonlight. Trees below me. Dozens of ridges in front of me in the distance. The song of crickets and a gentle night breeze.
Elk hunters found me the next morning. I'd made it ten miles from our camp, barefoot and in only boxers, dehydrated, sick from blood loss and madness, holding only Jack’s hand for explanation.
I told you all that, so I can say this. It’s taken me time to get over this, therapy, pills, drink, but the more time I tell the story, the more people I let know about it, the funnier it gets, you know? Jack’s final scream, hehe, you know, something you look back, and haha, laugh about.
A light tapping on the rainfly coaxed me from sleep. Small animal, maybe a mouse, on the roof. Maybe the gentle beginnings of a mountain rain. My eyes blinked, closed again, then reopened, too dark to make a difference. The gentle patter stopped, and I turned in my bag to return to sleep, when the sound of ripping nylon from the door of the tent froze me in place.
“Wha-” Jack exclaimed beside me, half choking in sleep, before I felt his bag’s friction against mine, felt him move in his cocoon, and felt him ripped through the hole in the tent.
“ENNIS!” He yelled, panic mashed with fear and bewilderment. He yelled again, an incoherent scream over the sound of crackling dried grass and rocks, the sound carried away with him.
I sat up, desperately fumbling for a headlamp, a flashlight, something, but it was dark, so terribly dark, and my trembling hands plodded empty space on the tent’s floor and Jack’s sleeping pad, still warm from his body heat.
“NO NO NO!” His voice, awake now, fully awake, pleading and high pitched, “ENNI-” and he screamed. I’ll never forget that scream, I’ll never stop hearing that scream, it fills my ears in moments of silence, and the last few moments of wake, it accompanies the alarm clock first thing in the morning, and the dull thu-thunk of the Netflix screen, of my car’s seat belt warning, and my manager’s disappointed tones. How it grew, high terror, to pain, dropping octaves mid-note, becoming wet, expulsionary. Animal. And then the sound of meat ripping. Of tissues of muscle and sinew and bone torn, like ripping a flap of a nylon tent.
And then it was silent. So still outside. So peaceful. The night unaware, or uncaring of what had happened.
What had happened? Thin mountain air filled my lungs, drawn by rapid and shallow breaths, desperate to feed a heart running at wind sprint speed. But I held my breath, willing the pounding my ears to silence itself, yearning for any sound, any input.
“Ja…Jack?” My shout barely whispered from the back of my throat.
“HA HA!” From somewhere around Jack’s direction. Mockingly playful.
“Hey-” I began, but interrupted. A hiss of air of something traveling toward me, something thrown or flying. The something hit me squarely in the chest, lightly.
My legs kicked in my bag, mind frozen on what it was, images of spiders, or bats, rabid squirrels, snakes, filling my heat, and I kicked, feeling the bursting zipper of the bag, and I wiggled and thrashed, squirming to get free.
Hiss. Thwack.
A light impact, this time on my forehead, and I felt the almost feathery sharpness of whatever it was.
“HA HA!” Again from Jack’s location.
Hiss. Thwack.
Another impact in the darkness against my chest. And more laughter, turning to a giggle in the distance. I felt the object fall into my lap, and I grabbed it, prepared to crush it, or cast it away before it could bite or claw or sting me. My hand wrapped around it and…
A pine cone? My other hand joined the first, rolling it between them, feeling the ridges and sharp tips, the folds.
“Jack? This isn’t funny!” I yelled. Confusion adding to the fear.
“AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!” Belly laughter, eye watering.
I dropped the pine cone and felt for a light source. Hands and knees on the floor of the tent, feeling through my ruined sleeping bag and my pack, my boots.
Thwack.
Without warning, something heavy flew through the air and hit me on the shoulder. Too heavy for a pine cone, soft, yet pointy. It landed like a wet mop and dropped to my hand below me. Without thinking, I grabbed it, my fingers wrapping around cooling dead fingers. A rubber wedding ring around one of them. A thumb, and palm, and a wrist wet with blood and exposed muscle and a shattered bone. Jack. Oh my god, Jack.
“HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAH!” Gasping cackles, uncontrolled joy from outside.
I bolted to my feet and rushed through the torn opening of the tent, blind to the night, I turned the direction of the laughter and ran. Ran barefoot over rocks, and sticks, ran into subalpine fir branches, and into small animal holes. The laughter continued. Laughing, laughing, mocking, amusing joy. So dark. So dark tonight, I thought, no moon, no stars, no North Star to guide me, so dark.
I felt the ground descend, felt elevation change pitch downward, and my leg slipped, tumbling down, falling, then rolling.
“HAHAH HAHA HAHAH HAAAAAAAAA!” Rolling inhales and exhales, elation.
A bowl of a big Doug Fir halted my roll and I struggled to breathe, wind knocked out, keenly aware of a hundred cuts in my feet, or perhaps one big one, of my arms and back scraped by rocks, and dirt embedded into my skin.
And the laughter stopped. From the center of the edges of the horizon, the dark faded, stars appearing one by one, as if a sheet was being pulled away, a curtain lifted. Moonlight. Trees below me. Dozens of ridges in front of me in the distance. The song of crickets and a gentle night breeze.
Elk hunters found me the next morning. I'd made it ten miles from our camp, barefoot and in only boxers, dehydrated, sick from blood loss and madness, holding only Jack’s hand for explanation.
I told you all that, so I can say this. It’s taken me time to get over this, therapy, pills, drink, but the more time I tell the story, the more people I let know about it, the funnier it gets, you know? Jack’s final scream, hehe, you know, something you look back, and haha, laugh about.
A light tapping on the rainfly coaxed me from sleep. Small animal, maybe a mouse, on the roof. Maybe the gentle beginnings of a mountain rain. My eyes blinked, closed again, then reopened, too dark to make a difference. The gentle patter stopped, and I turned in my bag to return to sleep, when the sound of ripping nylon from the door of the tent froze me in place.
“Wha-” Jack exclaimed beside me, half choking in sleep, before I felt his bag’s friction against mine, felt him move in his cocoon, and felt him ripped through the hole in the tent.
“ENNIS!” He yelled, panic mashed with fear and bewilderment. He yelled again, an incoherent scream over the sound of crackling dried grass and rocks, the sound carried away with him.
I sat up, desperately fumbling for a headlamp, a flashlight, something, but it was dark, so terribly dark, and my trembling hands plodded empty space on the tent’s floor and Jack’s sleeping pad, still warm from his body heat.
“NO NO NO!” His voice, awake now, fully awake, pleading and high pitched, “ENNI-” and he screamed. I’ll never forget that scream, I’ll never stop hearing that scream, it fills my ears in moments of silence, and the last few moments of wake, it accompanies the alarm clock first thing in the morning, and the dull thu-thunk of the Netflix screen, of my car’s seat belt warning, and my manager’s disappointed tones. How it grew, high terror, to pain, dropping octaves mid-note, becoming wet, expulsionary. Animal. And then the sound of meat ripping. Of tissues of muscle and sinew and bone torn, like ripping a flap of a nylon tent.
And then it was silent. So still outside. So peaceful. The night unaware, or uncaring of what had happened.
What had happened? Thin mountain air filled my lungs, drawn by rapid and shallow breaths, desperate to feed a heart running at wind sprint speed. But I held my breath, willing the pounding my ears to silence itself, yearning for any sound, any input.
“Ja…Jack?” My shout barely whispered from the back of my throat.
“HA HA!” From somewhere around Jack’s direction. Mockingly playful.
“Hey-” I began, but interrupted. A hiss of air of something traveling toward me, something thrown or flying. The something hit me squarely in the chest, lightly.
My legs kicked in my bag, mind frozen on what it was, images of spiders, or bats, rabid squirrels, snakes, filling my heat, and I kicked, feeling the bursting zipper of the bag, and I wiggled and thrashed, squirming to get free.
Hiss. Thwack.
A light impact, this time on my forehead, and I felt the almost feathery sharpness of whatever it was.
“HA HA!” Again from Jack’s location.
Hiss. Thwack.
Another impact in the darkness against my chest. And more laughter, turning to a giggle in the distance. I felt the object fall into my lap, and I grabbed it, prepared to crush it, or cast it away before it could bite or claw or sting me. My hand wrapped around it and…
A pine cone? My other hand joined the first, rolling it between them, feeling the ridges and sharp tips, the folds.
“Jack? This isn’t funny!” I yelled. Confusion adding to the fear.
“AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!” Belly laughter, eye watering.
I dropped the pine cone and felt for a light source. Hands and knees on the floor of the tent, feeling through my ruined sleeping bag and my pack, my boots.
Thwack.
Without warning, something heavy flew through the air and hit me on the shoulder. Too heavy for a pine cone, soft, yet pointy. It landed like a wet mop and dropped to my hand below me. Without thinking, I grabbed it, my fingers wrapping around cooling dead fingers. A rubber wedding ring around one of them. A thumb, and palm, and a wrist wet with blood and exposed muscle and a shattered bone. Jack. Oh my god, Jack.
“HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAH!” Gasping cackles, uncontrolled joy from outside.
I bolted to my feet and rushed through the torn opening of the tent, blind to the night, I turned the direction of the laughter and ran. Ran barefoot over rocks, and sticks, ran into subalpine fir branches, and into small animal holes. The laughter continued. Laughing, laughing, mocking, amusing joy. So dark. So dark tonight, I thought, no moon, no stars, no North Star to guide me, so dark.
I felt the ground descend, felt elevation change pitch downward, and my leg slipped, tumbling down, falling, then rolling.
“HAHAH HAHA HAHAH HAAAAAAAAA!” Rolling inhales and exhales, elation.
A bowl of a big Doug Fir halted my roll and I struggled to breathe, wind knocked out, keenly aware of a hundred cuts in my feet, or perhaps one big one, of my arms and back scraped by rocks, and dirt embedded into my skin.
And the laughter stopped. From the center of the edges of the horizon, the dark faded, stars appearing one by one, as if a sheet was being pulled away, a curtain lifted. Moonlight. Trees below me. Dozens of ridges in front of me in the distance. The song of crickets and a gentle night breeze.
Elk hunters found me the next morning. I'd made it ten miles from our camp, barefoot and in only boxers, dehydrated, sick from blood loss and madness, holding only Jack’s hand for explanation.
I told you all that, so I can say this. It’s taken me time to get over this, therapy, pills, drink, but the more time I tell the story, the more people I let know about it, the funnier it gets, you know? Jack’s final scream, hehe, you know, something you look back, and haha, laugh about.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
Dont com in heer
My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore
Fore give me Jesus the Devil won
-K
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
The old woman flailed in the snow, like a fish upon the deck of my grandfather’s boat, and I watched her. She did not cry out. The neurons for speech had degenerated long before I began working there. At the time, I felt nothing, save for the fascination that a human being, reduced to its most primal end state, was so much like a fish. What beauty there was in her movements. It was nearly holy.
“Meredith!” A voice from the hallway. My reverie broken.
“Judith got out, I’m sorry, she got out!” Fear gripped me. Fear of interruption. Fear of the administrative consequence of my transgression. Fear that God’s revelation, as presented, would be taken away. Fear since I had been working in this nursing home for less than a week, my first job after graduation. Fear that nurses eat their young, and I was young at the time.
“Call a code, get out of the way.” Linda, the charge nurse, pushed me aside. She erupted through the door which had been, but seconds ago, my viewing lens, my glimpse into true reality, devoid of corruption. Her knees sank into trampled powder beside the dying old woman, Judith.
“Call 911,” Linda said.
Carl, the janitor, had witnessed Linda’s bolt through the door. He propped his push broom against the wall and waddled to me in the way of older men whose youth was dominated by manual labor.
“What happened?” he had asked.
“I…she got out…” The panic of youth, of inexperience had stolen my words. To be so transfixed, to be forced into the transition of the abstraction of creation, to the concrete of this place jarred me.
He ran to the emergency phone.
“Meredith, did you call a code?!”
“No…not...no.” What was the procedure to call a code? My training consisted of the instructions, yet I retained none of it. A failure on my part, truly shameful. Procedures are in place to not only be followed, but learned. I did neither. One may be forgivable, given the circumstances, however not both.
“Get out here! Stay with her. Let her seize, keep her airway clear, I’ll be right back.”
I succumbed to Linda’s coax. I kneeled beside the shaking husk of what once was a woman. Linda departed.
Judith. Her name was Judith. Her child had visited this afternoon, at the beginning of my shift. An uncouth man. I was told he visited weekly, checking on his deposit. A planter of litter inside this facility of debris. She did not know him today. He left flowers in her room, they smelled of grocery store dough. He had hugged her when he left. She had stared with vacant eyes as I took a blood sample from her. What sins did she commit to be abandoned in this place? Or for her own self to abandon her body? Perhaps he was the original sinner, and she was merely part of his debt.
Her arms folded to her chest, palms facing her shoulders. Decerebrate posturing. I had only seen it in school. There would be no need for a clear airway now. Her soul, if she had one still, or ever, would soon be vacant.
“What do you see?” I asked softly, a secret between only us.
Spittle bubbled from the corners of her blue tinged lips. Perhaps lack of oxygen, perhaps the cold. Perhaps both. Her eyes fluttered half open, jaundiced yellow sclera all that was visible.
“Get out of the way, Meredith!” Linda again, Lisa and Toni too. I complied with the request. What sins would they judge me for? There was a bench nearby, and I sat on its ice-covered slats.
The paramedics arrived, the rhythmic chest compression matching my own beating heart. The buzz of an AED, the electric current coursed through Judith’s veins into my own. Revelation. Jubilation. She was meeting God. I wept with the joy of a minor prophet receiving a syllable of the Holy Word.
I shivered as they collected her. Stretcher wheels skidding, locked with snow as paramedics and firemen pushed her through the courtyard and into the building. God went with her, and I remained.
A spectre, dark and cold as the night, sat beside me on the bench.
“What the hell are you doing?” Linda. Her teeth reflected the glint of the courtyard security light. Her skin was smooth, pale. For a woman proclaiming to be in her late 30s, she showed none of the markers. No laugh lines, no blemishes, no deposits of foundation common among her generation.
“I’m sorry…” all I could muster.
“How long were you standing there?! I know you’re new, but that isn’t an excuse. Go back to your rounds. We’re gonna have a come to Jesus before the end of shift.” She left. Bleach and rotten kelp lingered in her wake.
Carl was scooping shovels full of stained snow into a biohazard bag.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I passed him, for I was sorry.
“First time is rough, and that’s OK. Never let it get easy. You ain’t a freakin’ monster, girl.” He spoke in the non-rhotic way of the south of the city.
“Thank you, Carl.” I said.
Upon entry to the door, I saw the blinking red light. Small, perched between near the wall and the ceiling of the hallway. A security camera, its field of view the entryway to the courtyard. I looked at the lens, a squid eye judging, threatening, transmitting its witness of the old woman’s escape, my pursuit, and my halt at the barrier to the outside world.
True unconditional fear gripped me. Though I have known fear in the years since, absolute terror in fact, perhaps no fear was greater than watching my inert accuser in that South Boston nursing home. My license would be revoked. Investigations. Destitution. Civil or criminal penalties. Four years of school jettisoned by five minutes of fascination.
The women’s restroom had a lock. A single stall, a trash can, a sink. There was no mirror to inspect my face. I still wore mascara in public then, the darkness of its seep visible to me in my peripheral vision. My flip phone provided little usable reflection, and my compact mirror was in my bag at the nurses’ station. I dabbed with wet paper towels, perhaps too many, perhaps too long, but water is a cleanser. Water soothes. Water is holy.
Clear the mechanism.
The security recording system was located in Linda’s office. Then, I did not know it was uncommon for a charge nurse to have a private office. Linda occupy herself in her office several times per shift, presumably to do paperwork, and likely swap out tapes the VHS tapes, for this was a time before digital.
My rounds needed conclusion, however Linda had her own tasks to complete. If Judith had perished, there would be a need to collect her items for delivery to her child. Night shift was short staffed. The residents would be agitated by the commotion of one of their own being set free. There was time to enact my plan without fear of discovery.
Linda’s office was located behind the nursing station. Derelict. Voices from a room down the hall, confused residents. Linda would be upset with my absence. No matter. My time of employment was nearly finished here. Some actions, when taken early, stain the reputation so long, so thoroughly, their mark casts a shadow. Tonight was one such. The nursing community was insular in the area, though not small. Reputations could be jettisoned or ignored. Further employment at a place like this, even if exemplary, would itself become a blemish on a career’s trajectory.
The door opened smoothly to a darkened room, lit only by the glow of a computer monitor, and the several television screens. Filing cabinets, posters, a battered metal desk with two mismatched chairs facing. Linda’s chair sighed as I deposited my weight upon it. Her desk a testimony of disorganization, knick-knacks, empty mugs filled with pencils.
Beside the desk, a separate shelf was built into the wall. Five monitors atop five VCRs upon the shelf, zip-tied wires leading to a central AV input selector, wires again splitting, and worming into the wall. One monitor shows the nurses’ station and main entrance, another, the entrance to the med room, the other three the ingress and egress points within the building.
I pressed the STOP button on the VCR beneath the monitor for the courtyard, then pressed rewind. Though it would easiest to simply remove the tape, I discarded the idea. The footage would need to be erased, lending credence to a story of technical malfunction. The tape rewound, motors spinning slowly at first, counter numbers running backward.
I have always been a curious individual. As some find solace in the intake of alcohol, so thus is my desire for novelty. In the years since, much as the liquor has for many, novelty has lead me down a lonely path, consuming me, altering in ways unrecognizable to the young woman sitting in that borrowed seat. Much as the drunkard outwardly regrets their choices, internally they are beholden to a greater power over them. Sorcery perhaps, though I consider it a form of heresy. But I digress.
My attention was first drawn to an 8x10 framed painting atop Linda’s desk. It was of a caucasian male, permed black hair wildly voluminous, rounded into a dark halo. Smokey glasses covered his pale pale skin. He wore a bolo tie atop a black button shirt tucked into black slacks held by a large golden license plate belt. On his back, he wore a high collared cape, black on the outside, red within. A heart symbol in red Sharpie around the word \*Phantom\*, scrawled to the man’s side. Perhaps her husband, or boyfriend, though I had never witnessed Linda wear a ring, or speak of a man.
The majority of the desk drawers held nothing of significance, and nothing I will report here. However, the small cooler nestled underneath the desk bewildered me. Inside were four one-liter packets of blood. I made a mental note. Mishandling and incorrect storage of biohazardous waste is reportable to the Board of Nursing, and I would be doing so upon my resignation, if they chose to level undue harm.
The tape had rewound approximately twenty minutes in the past, I stopped its rearward progress and pressed PLAY. I saw myself standing in the doorway, gazing at the camera. I stopped the tape, and continued to rewind.
Voices from behind the door. I glanced at the security feed from the nurse’s station immediately outside. Someone was there. Black scrubs and a beanie, their back to the camera. I couldn’t see who it was, however, their face and hair were obscured by the camera's angle. Likely not Linda.
I pressed PLAY.
I watched myself stand in front of the door to the courtyard. My jaw slackened, my hand pressed to glass. Enraptured. The early years of adulthood, when the incubated habits of the child thrash into the stupidity of adolescence, are the last unique time in someone’s life. Their humanity has yet to be determined, for youth are truly not people, merely engines combusting sensation and exhausting hubris. Humanity comes later, when veins appear on the hands, as has been said by more eloquent individuals than myself.
On the screen a pair a set of black scrubs walked into view. Propelled by an unseen force, I stumbled aside, and the door opened, the scrubs walking through the door. I cocked my head. A habit from childhood. I remember being shoved by Linda, yet she did appear on camera. The red ponytail did not swing, for it was not there, her tattooed hands made no contact with me. An empty suit of polyester clothing, walking on its own.
“What are you doing?” Harsh tone, accusation in the question, from the open office door.
“Linda, hi, I’m sorry, I, um, wanted to, to talk to you,” I said, the unlubricated words struggling to escape my teeth.
“Why are you in my office, Meredith? Why are you at my desk?” She walked slowly, quietly, no steps upon the old linoleum floor. A smoothness of gait uncanny, as if she floated.
“I don’t think I can do this job. I appreciate you guys for taking a chance on me, but, I’m so sorry…I’m gonna quit,” I said.
“You are a sucky nurse. Now, answer me hon, why are you at my desk?” Her tone changed. Gone was the confrontation, replaced by welcome, by comfort. Like a gentle surf heard through a window.
Her top lip was red against her pale, freckled, wrinkle-less skin. I recalled her not wearing lipstick earlier.
“I was trying to figure out what happened. I feel so bad. I screwed up, I’m so sorry.” Nothing I said was untrue, merely the motivations behind my actions and feelings. I prefer to lie, if necessary, only through omission, but this was before I had set such rules for myself.
Linda stood over me. She was tall for a woman. Tall for a man. Even when standing she could leer over the top of my head, but seated as I was, I strained to keep eye contact with her. My neck exposed.
She placed a long finger on my nose, gently holding it.
“Little thing, what the fuck are you doing in my cooler?” She smiled as she whispered, her red stained teeth were sharper than I had seen before, like jagged glass in a broken window.
“I don’t know, I swear I didn’t touch anything, I was just watching the tape.”
A cold hand rested on my shoulder, gripping my collar bone. Her fingers kneading in comfort and safety. I wanted to lay my head upon that hand, to pin my ear against it, and listen to its song of tendons and bone.
On the screen, an empty set of scrubs burst through the door and ran off camera.
“Little thing, when did you figure it out?” Linda said, her voice was deeper, softer, her accent gone, something irresistible and unstoppable. It called to me.
“I, I don’t, I didn’t, I want to go home, I’m sorry,” I said. Confusion had replaced my usually analytical mind. I did not understand the new set of inputs. The algebraic equation so devoid of numeric factors, it had been reduced to a line of poetry.
Linda gripped my other shoulder, and leaned down, drawing my face toward hers. She smelled of copper and the sea. Her jagged teeth, longer now, shined with red-dyed saliva. I saw myself reflected in them. Witness to my confusion, churning with a longing that was not my own. But, I did not see God within her mouth.
“It’s true. Nurses eat their young, little thing.”
Clear the mechanism.
My forehead made sudden and violent contact with her chin. My father was a Boston cop, and had taught me from an early age to never wait for violence to be visited upon you. I saw stars twinkling in overlay as Linda’s head snapped back. I punched her stomach, it gave little under my fist. She pulled me from the chair, dragging me down as she fell.
I landed on top of her, and tried to drive my fist into her kidney. Pain burned through my face, as her fist made contact with my orbital bone, and I was knocked down, my head hitting the side of the desk. The world began to fade, but a new sensation of pain kept me conscious as something pulled my hair, pinning my ear to my shoulder, exposing my neck.
In desperation, I flailed with my fists, making contact with something sharp and jagged, I wrenched my head away, hair ripping in a bloody clump. I tucked my chin and smashed my bodyweight against Linda, driving her into the near wall, feeling the give of drywall through her.
Fists pounded my side, I felt something hard shatter inside me. I would learn later it was two ribs, uncleanly broken. Breath escaped my lungs and drawing new air in became difficult. I struck with my fist toward her face, but she dodged, and my hand smashed through drywall and shattered against a 2x4 stud. Something crashed to the side. I saw the television shelf collapse, landing in Linda’s lap. A TV landed beside her. I drove an elbow in her face before she could fully remove the shelf that had entangled her hands. She reeled, black ooze spilling from her nose. In desperation I grabbed the TV, held it high, and brought its glass screen over her head.
Pain, and the smell of burning hair and boiling motor oil was the last sensation I had before the darkness took me.
My mother and father were sitting beside one another when I awoke in a hospital room. He was a detective by then and was wearing his usual tweed sportscoat. My mother was in her house dress. It hurt to breath. To move.
“Meredith, oh, you’re awake!” she had lamented. My father held my bruised hand and wept.
I, too, wept. For that was the day I had seen God, but also His divine absence.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
Her hand, pallid, bespoke by fires of fever, did stain mine shirt, wracked muscles pining for the words taken from her half frozen face.
“Speaketh not, mine wife, mine love, for as in life ‘twas thine path to follow, thus in your death ‘tis mine path to lead,” I viewed her as Isaac viewed Providence through the Philistine fog, and I wept. She turned her head on her pillow, and did allow her drool to fall from her seized mouth, and she did squeeze my chest. “For soon ye shall be reborn, and thus our spirits may never part.”
A knock upon the door, that I did ignore. As Jacob did crack the door of King Jeremiah, did it open nonetheless.
“Brother Ephram, the hour groweth short, He will be soon,” Brother Festus, mine closeth brother.
“Ye, she ist ready, and I, too.”
“Very well, brother, blessings,” And the door did heal its crack to the wall.
Lo, mine wife, mine wife, God hath chosen, and God hath spoketh, and as one shall be born, so thus one shall be taketh, and the Group of Seventeen hath chosen you in your condition to be summoned into the new, just as your were summoned before, and I was summoned before, and they were summoned before, and three hundred and one others shall be summoned after, and before, and again for these blessed and holy six generations shall turnt to seven. Amen.
“Hey dipshit, you done having that Veggie Tales broad drool on you or you gonna fuckin’ let me out?”
The newcomer. The interloper. The infildelium. His arrival did harken alarm, as the unclean, the spiritually broken doth. We did commit him to a cell of iron, secluded from the Godly soil, confined to our sanctuary of faith. His judgement would come at the hands of God now. As is their custom.
“Nay,” I spoke.
“Swell, you gonna grow a mustache to connect that beard, you fuckin’ moron? You look like an extra from Kingpin, dumbass. Let me tell you something, I get out of this joint, and the Mounties are gonna be having their fuckin’ way with all your asses, you dig? I just needed to use the fuckin’ phone, cause you primitive screwheads don’t know what a fuckin’ cell tower is. Or shit, how much for one of those pickups? I’ll buy it from you right now, be on my way, and you can go back to being cornfed fuckin’ cavemen.”
He spoke violently in syllable, accent, a language of Sweet Sejenus Himself, but in a way of speaking and words unlike the Census man, or the Post, or the grain buyers, or automotive parts dealers we dealt with.
“‘...and I did bend the bars of iron, for mine arm was iron, and my bracing was the Lord,’” I did quote, a favorite passage.
“I-gonna-ron this size 11 Carlos Santos up your ass if you don’t let me outta here your fuckin’ dope.” He did strike a cell bar, a ring upon his smallest finger did ring, and mine wife did move her fevered and ruined face to gaze upon the stranger.
“S’matta with your broad anyway? ‘Sides a chronic case of inbreeding?”
I did ignore him, and lowered mine wife’s head upon the pillow of feathers. She had been a goodly wife, twentyseven years did she serve me, as I served her. And lo, did we produce no future, I did love her as Saul loved Edith, as King Scrooge did love for Marley, as God did love us, his earthly spouses. Yey, as shadows cast from thine window frame upon this holy church, I knew our time, in this vessel for her, was nearing an end. To light the candles, as the sacrament drew near. I would guide her to meet God, and God demanded the old light, of waxed fats and anointing oils.
“You know I’m a fuckin’ doctor, right? Did I not mention that like fifty fuckin’ times? Or can you rubes not count that fuckin’ high? Or have you dumbfucks perfected the art of coughing in each other's faces until somebody feels better?”
God, may my final hour with mine wife be spent in silence, why doth ye test me with this man and his harshest of word?
“Now she ain’t much to look at, but she’s hard to miss, if you get me drift, but looks like she has Bell’s Palsy, lemme guess, she gets these right? Like half her face freezes up and she gets all messed up and shit? And let me guess, this time it didn’t bounce back to looking like the beaming fuckin’ catcher’s mit of a mug she usually has?”
“‘As light in the darkness of night, doth the spirit of faith guide the feet of righteous, and as feet are guided to God, so doth God guide His choosing.’ Amen.” I did pray, as I put flame to another candle, and repeated the prayer.
“HEY NUMBNUTS! I CAN CURE YOUR WIFE! ‘CURE’ YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH?!”
A gurgle from mine wife, and I did return to prayer and flame.
“What’s up toots? You wanna talk again? You wanna say goodbye to your fatass husband? I can do that, it’s one shot, real fuckin’ easy, miracle cure, you’ll be up and slobbering on each other in five minutes.” His voice was as a woman speaketh to a pup, who hath yet learned not to make miracle puddles and piles on the inside rug.
Forgiveth me Lord, for I fear this man doth draw mine ire.
“Come on babe, sorry I called you fat, just bring me that case, I can make it all better babe, make you the smiling piece of god’s ass you were always meant to be, huh?”
To mine surprise, I did see mine wife sitting, drops of fever sweat dripping upon her gingham dress, and her bonnet soaketh as a horse at gallup.
“Mine wife, listen not to his words, for he deceiveth, God’s time has come and…” I began, but faltered. The enormity of losing her burned with each lighted flame, though she would be reborn in Brother Ezekial’s wife's womb, as even now the infant did kick, soulless inside its mother, begging to be given the soul of mine wife. I kneeled to light a low flame.
When God sent Thomas to the wilderness to fetch treasure of the pirate Ahab the Whaler, as was written by Sweet Sejenus Himself on the Holy Antler, was he not beset by flies? By leeches? By the children of the serpent? And though Thomas’s fath was strong, he lay dying, and lo, did his faith hold, and a boy did approacheth him, and offer him bitter root, and glowing fern, and though the boy was an infidelium, he did heal Thomas, and when the boy did witness the miracle, he did fall to his knees and pray to Thomas, and did renounce his father’s god of fishermen and bread and wine. God was coming, and soon, and maybe this was His inspiration, mayhaps this was miracle. Mayhaps God wished to meet mine wife not as a cripple, but to see her smile before him, to see her as she had been made.
“Mmmmemmfffrrmmm!” Mine wife did say, and did hold her finger toward the stranger, whose hands did grip the bars of his cell.
“How stranger, dost thou heal an ailment from God?” I did ask, after lighting the final candle.
“Cause I’m a doctor, dipshit, and I got all sorts of little fuckin’ miracles in my little fuckin’ bag of tricks over there, ya fuckin’ understand? Or do you stupid hicks only have doctors when it comes time to playing with your sister?” He did a strange gesture of holding the longer finger up on each hand in a motion, up and down, as the oil derricks went on the outskirts of the compound.
God, is this temptation? Or is this thine wish? Will thoust forgive me if I make the wrong choice? I gazed upon mine wife, on the floor now, crawling toward the stranger’s hard square bag with the strange markings of three interconnected circles, one stacked upon two.
“Yeah babe, you got it, you got it, a little further, and I can make it all fuckin’ better, you’re fuckin’ beautiful toots, a real fuckin’ looker, we’re gonna make you look like Cher in her heyday, come one babe, a little closer,” the stranger cooed in his strange accent. Mine hand did stay her progress, and I did drag her back, and did place her back into the trough.
“Rest mine wife,” her eyes, one sagged a thumb’s width compared to her normal one, seemed to plead to me, and drool did flow from her mouth, and my forehead did meet hers, and mine sweat did mix with hers, and I felt the heat of unholy fever inside her, and I knew that God would be displeased with us, with her, if she was given unto him as ravaged.
“I relent, and I trust mine God to guide mine feet,” I whispered to her, and her gnarled hand did grace my cheek. I squeezed it, and lay it upon her soiled lap, and I did stand and faced the man behind the bars.
“What ist that which ist needeth, vulgar stranger?” I said unto him.
“You’re gonna do it? My man, I take back everything I ever said about you shmucks, listen, grab the case, and give it to me.”
“Nay, God is coming soon, and I shall bear the responsibility of denying him or delighting him, I shall not place that burden upon you.” He did expel air as a frustrated teen doth when told their chores are undone.
“Fine, punch in the code, it’s 6969, there’s a needle in there, stick it in her ass cheek, it’s preloaded, but it won’t work unless you gimme the phone and the battery charger charging gimmick in my coat pocket.” He did speak fast, mayhaps excitedly. His excitement was contagious upon my spirit, already elevated by the notion of speaking again to mine wife, and meeting God so soon.
I pressed the numbers and the case did hiss, cold air from within biting the back of mine hand as did the rat of Nineveh bite the hand of Clayton the Potato Farmer.
“Careful, it’s fuckin’ cold as shit in there, it reacts to heat, so dont’ fuckin’ touch anything but the needle, ya dig, and it’s just like juicin’ a horse, you rubes got horses don’t ya?”
“Aye,” I said, and did carefully wrap mine fingers around the large injecting needle, seeing that it was filled with a grey liquid that did begin to stir as my fingers’ heat made contact.
“OK, great, first, though, you gotta gimme the phone and the battery, it’s my jacket, if you don’t do that, shit’s gonna get bad, fire and brimstone and shit, ya know? So pick up the needle, let it warm up in your hand for a bit, and gimme the fuckin’ phone.” An octave higher had his voice raised, thus was the holy excitement, and I felt it crawl upon my spirit. This was a miracle man, sent from the barbarian world, and chosen to come. I wrapped mine hand around the cold needle and tugged it free from the case’s hold upon it, and did wrap mine hand around it, ignoring the bitter cold upon mine callouses.
His jacket, a grey thing of slickness, lacking buttons, but affixed with a zipper the way of his kind, identified his sect as Member’s Only. The inside pocket contained a small rectangle of glass and black ceramic, and another of black plastic. The cellular phone I had witnessed mechanics and delivery drivers use.
I did present him unto the phone and battery.
“Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck,” he did exclaim.
“Mine name is Ephram,” I did correct.
“Yeah, thank you too fuck face, now stick that thing in your wife’s ass, the meaty part, won’t be hard to miss. Make sure you’re on muscle, and make sure it’s a fuckin’ big part, you do too small a thing her fuckin’ legs gonna burn off.”
Mine wife had already cast her bosom and stomach upon the ground, and raised her dress to show herself to me. And I did pierce her, below the hip, and I did inject the plunger as the Ferrier doth the horse. And she moaned, and she did buck, and drool, and howl, and did fall silent.
“Hold on, gimme a minute, she’ll be…”
“Lord, mine God, forgive me for the actions I have taken if they are not in your name, for mine wife is your creation, and I wish to render unto you her back, as close as she was, and-”
“Ephram?”
A voice, uncertain, quiet, broken.
“Dear?”
Mine eyes did meet hers, and I did see her smile on both sides of her lips.
“Stranger, barbarian, beast, healer, how didst…” I stuttered. In moments, breaths, it seemed she had been freed from her bodily mark of sin.
She looked around, and did hold her shaking hand to mine, and I did feel vibration of holy spirit course within her veins.
“What hath he done, Ephram?” She asked, “I feel His power course through me, and repair mine failing mind,” then she coughed. A puddle of grey and yellow mucus falling unto the floor, and I did watch as the yellow turned to grey, and seemed to slowly slink toward the bars of the cell.
“‘Tis nay our knowing mine wife, as Natty Bumppo did transcribe the plates of the last Mohican-” I began, but mine words were lost to the creak to the rear of the church, and the thud-clop-hiss of foot and breath upon the oaken floor of the livestock a distance two throws.
And then a breeze did extinguish the candles, and I looked, and I did see, two antlers, a skull of a moose and a man melded as one, skin of moss, and a rib cage of eyes under folded bat wings. And I bowed my head.
God had arrived.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT! OH FUCK!” The strange doctor did shout with irrational exuberance. And from mine corner eye, I did see him furiously hitting the screen of his cellular telephone.
God stepped on hooven feet, swishing His barbed tail to and fro, the hollow skull eyes transfixed upon us, as the holy dozen eyes of judgement upon its ribs did dart to and fro. He paused three paces from the trough and drew Himself to His full nine feet, and His voice did click and purr. Mine bladder did let loose, as mine faith did waver, as has happened for all, and my wonderment masked by irrational fear of mine loving and careful protector and creator. Mine wife slid upon her backside, and with the agility of a woman half her age, moved unto her knees, and then lay prostrate upon the floor facing God, and I did the same.
She coughed, a longer, wretching thing, and she did vomit a stream of grey unto the floor, though her hands remained clasped and her head down. The grey mass seemed to split, half traveling backward as a snail, to the cell, half toward God.
God stepped toward the edge of the trough, and did lean down to consider His creations.
I began, “God, I offer unto-”
At a speed inhuman, I felt myself snatched by the His holy claws and uplifted, dangling, held out by bony spindle arms and judged by His eyes, and I did see mine wife snatched in His second hand, and His ribs did open like unto a bear trap, and I did see black matter and rows upon rows of teeth in a circle, and lo, mine wife was cast unto His open ribs, which did clamp and whirr, and grind, and I did hear screaming of holy ecstasy from mine wife, though it sounded as terror and pain, and blood did seep from the bottom of His rib opening, yet more grey than red, and I wept and I kicked.
“YOU FUCKIN’ PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN’ FUCKED IN THE FUCKIN’ HEAD!” The stranger from the cell. I turned to assure him, and did see two bars were dissolved, as if eaten through as acid does a bone, and a third and fourth bar were nearly gone, and the mass of grey had increased tenfold around him, coating more bars, and he would be free soon.
“Mine God…” I began to speak through a wavering voice, terror betrayed me, though faith prevailed.
And God did open his ribs unto me, and I did see the black again, and the teeth…were grey…and the black was grey…and mass of grey did skitter through him, and course and surge, and God did howl and I fell as He dropped me unto the trough below, and mine ankle did snap upon the edge, and I cried.
And God’s arms did raise to the roof, and He did thrash, and He did kick, and He did scream as the grey mass dripped from His mouth and His eyes and His ears. And God did jump, and through the wooden roof of His church he bashed through and unfurled His wings as His foot fell off and landed beside me, and then He turned in the air, and His wings failed Him, and He crashed to the ground, and screamed an animal cry of fear of pain and death, and went silent as He became a puddle of grey.
“Come on, dumbass,” a hand upon mine shoulder, bunching my suspenders together and pulling me out of the trough, and along the floor, a small bubble of normal amongst the grey that had coated the walls around us. “You got the keys to your pickup?”
“Yay,” I did say, uncertain of what else to utter.
“Good you fuckin’ rube, you’re gonna drive me to Calgary, and we’re gonna meet my guys, and you’re gonna tell them just how great nanotechnology fuckin’ is.” He voice was gruff, angry, and though the grey mass did approacheth us, it seemed to die and dissolve as the strange doctor drug me along the floor of the church to the People’s door.
That night, mine ankle healed as the doctor had giveth me an injection in mine ass, and I felt bone meld with bone within me.
“Good shit huh? And dumbass venture capital don’t wanna touch it, got their raging micro boners all up on AI these days, before that it was blockchain, fuckin morons. Well, you can write this fuckin’ down, and you can tell about whatever the fuck that was you primative dipshits were about.”
I did not understandeth his words, but mine colony, 15,000 acres of farm and timber and oil, I had watched turned grey from the summit of the hill. And I had wept. And I wrote down what did happen, and I giveth it unto you.
“Guess you stupid mother fuckers should have just let me call a fuckin’ tow truck,” the Doctor had said.
God forgive me, though You are not alive to do so any longer.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
Dont com in heer
My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore
Fore give me Jesus the Devil won
-K
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
Dont com in heer
My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore
Fore give me Jesus the Devil won
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
Dont com in heer
My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore
Fore give me Jesus the Devil won
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
*Dont com in heer*
*My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore*
*Fore give me Jesus the Devil won*
*-K*
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
Listen, I know we, I…we fucked up, and I’m going to live with that, I’ll never stop living with that, but I’m telling you this now so somebody, maybe somebody smarter than me understands, and maybe they can do something about it.
Hank and I went into a mine. A silver mine, out in the Owyhees, there’s a shitload of them out there, there’s a ghost town full of people called Silver City out there for fucksakes. Hank smokes dope with a dude from BLM who tells him where all the mines are. I mean, it’s not a big secret, the government knows about them, there’s paperwork going back 150 years on this stuff, and they’re trying to close the older abandoned ones, but after the budget cuts and firings, it’s probably never going to happen. So people like Hank and I hike in and explore them.
Sometimes we find cool shit, like old mugs, or tools. We found some old dynamite once, the crown jewel of our collection was a pair of original Levis, like 1800s, some miner shit his pants and Donald Ducked out the shaft, never to be heard from again. Whatever, sorry, none of this shit matters now.
We hiked into an adit Hank had been told about, maybe six, seven miles from the dirt road, and had set up camp just by early evening.
“Call it,” Hank said, holding out a silver dollar he’d been carrying since he lifted it from a guest of a pioneer cemetery years ago.
“What am I calling it for?” I asked.
“Heads we go look for the adit, tails, we lighten the load by getting lit.” He produced a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry from his back, his smile, gap-toothed and stupid, reflected onto Lady Liberty’s worn cheeks.
“How about a shot for good luck, and bring the bottle to celebrate when we find it?” I said.
His smile only wavered when he swallowed the first pull and tossed it to me. Bitter warmth trickled down my throat, the last warmth.
The adit wasn’t hard to find, they usually aren’t if you have exact GPS coordinates and look for running water, and this wasn’t any different. Located about 30 yards uphill from a stream, tailing piles worn by weather and centuries, humps of sandy ground on the outside, surrounded by riparian brush and Douglas Firs. Some mines are blocked by the government, if they have funding, or can track down the claim holder. Some old timers put timbers up to keep claim jumpers out and dumbfucks like us out.
“Look at that,” Hank said.
Rusted iron bars stood at the entrance to the mine, braced into the rock wall on top, the sides, and the bottom, though water had eaten away at the floor, leaving a six inch gap.
“When did you say this was abandoned?” I asked.
“19..14? I don’t remember,” Hank took a gulp of the gin and passed the bottle to me.
“Dude, check this out,” He pointed to an iron plate riveted between two vertical bars. Weathered and rusted, the remains of an etched symbol remained, about the size of a palm. The symbol seemed to be vaguely half-egg shaped, vertical lines giving the appearance of perspective, with a small half-circle at the bottom.
“Igloo?” Hank asked.
“Maybe a beehive? Weird. Anyway, don’t think we’re getting into this thing tonight.”
“Yeah, sucks, we’ll have to come back in the morning with the Sawzall,” Hank said. He leaned against an iron bar, producing a short noise of protest, before the ancient metal gave way under this weight. Rust eaten shards flaked into the ankle deep stream below. Hank pushed again, and the bar separated. I joined, pushing another bar, the evening breeze carrying metal clattering upon rock up the drainage.
We decided it was too late to do a full and thorough exploration, but curiosity and excitement of a new mine was too much, and we would wander in as far as fading surface light would take us. Going underground is a serious matter, helmets are recommended, three light sources, ropes, flares, hammers, whatever, but peaking your head in for a bit isn’t that big a deal.
About 30 yards in, the smell of firs disappeared, replaced by bat guano and stale air of the underground, when my headlamp caught a dark grey streak snaking through the mine wall, meandering into the darkness ahead.
“Dude,” I said, “This is a silver vein, this must have been what they were following.”
“Yeah, but usually they mine this stuff, weird they left it.”
Another 20 yards and the opening’s dying evening light grew dimmer, and the tunnel snaked a hard left turn. Driven by curiosity of a new mine, and several pulls from the gin, we continued on, headlamps splashing granite, unseen by any human eyes that still saw.
“Douse your light,” Hank said. I did.
“What’s up?”
“Look.”
Ahead, an unknown distance in the dark, a glow, bluish green light, gently pushing away the darkness. Maybe an opening, ventilation shaft catching the reflection from the sunset just right, filtered down through mica and pyrite, or wet rock. We clicked on our headlamps and proceeded forward without speaking.
40 yards the splashing under our feet stopped as the seep ran dry, and the shaft turned a corner, and we met another iron grate blocking our way. Behind the bars, we could see another corner, and the glow, a hint of light when Hank first mentioned it, seemed to radiate and dance like a screen saver on a monitor in another room. Hank approached the bars first and pushed, the first bar falling to the ground with ease. I approached, intent to help when my boot landed on a hollow thud, instead of the crunching grind of sand on rock.
I gently kicked at the ground, brushing 100 years of accumulated dust and rock. A piece of wood, a cookie cut from a long dead Doug Fir log, the remnants of a bolt hole seeming at the top, and…letters carved into it? I brushed them away as Hank continued to obliterate the barrier.
Dont com in heer
My frend turnt and I bureed him in ore
Fore give me Jesus the Devil won
-K
At the bottom was the same strange igloo or beehive design, and a cross. Cutting through the fog of the gin, the light of apprehension began to set it in. Hank and I are no strangers to stuff, we’ve found bodies, well, skeletons, graves, we’ve seen where men were laid to rest with full Christian burials, and where men met quick, unexpected, and violent ends under piles of rocks and tools, but…
“Hey Hank…” My words faded with the clank of the final bar impacting the ground, and the shuffling of Hank’s boots toward the glowing light. Dude, come on man, something feels weird about this, I thought, I should have said, I should have reached for his pack and grabbed and yanked him to me, and told him. Instead, I placed the wooden round against the wall and followed, slowly, letting the distance between us grow, and watching his shadow disappear behind the corner.
“Dude! Holy shit! Look at this!” Hank yelled ahead.
Ferns. That’s what met my eyes as I rounded the corner. A perfect rectangle of ferns, about six feet by three feet, knee high, their reptilian feather fronds drooping from solid stems, emitting a green, almost neon light.
“What the fuck?” I said. Hank’s headlamp turned to me blinding my eyes before he switched it off, the circular burn blotting out the shadow of his face as I blinked at him.
“Wild, right? Wonder if we can smoke ‘em?” he said. I heard the smile in his words, but it didn’t allay the unknown dread that had built in me. Something was wrong here.
“Something’s wrong, man, I think we should go.”
“Why? Dude, this is like a legit scientific discovery! Like, have you ever heard of glowing plants?” I hadn’t, but I hadn’t heard of a lot of things, that didn’t mean it didn’t wig me out.
“Are they radioactive?” I asked at length.
Hank tugged at his curly, unkempt hair, the tufts held fast.
“Nope, probably not.”
We discussed leaving, and coming back in the morning. I made the argument that I didn’t want to fucking be there, and Hank made the argument that he did. We finally compromised when Hank flipped the silver dollar, and Lady Liberty smiled at me from his gloved palm.
“Hold on a minute, I just wanna see something,” Hank stepped toward the gathering of plants, and stuck his gloved hand toward one, gently holding a frond toward him.
“Oh, mother fucker!” Hank yelled.
“You good?!” Adrenaline spiking through me, apprehension turned to fear.
“Yeah, sorry, sorry, fucking spike man, went right through my glove, I’m good, sorry. Man, don’t touch those things,” he laughed, the way he does when he gets hurt, the way he hides the embarrassment, the way he makes it so he thinks I won’t worry and we can move on.
Later, at camp, fire burning, dinner eaten, we sat, and I watched Hank dig at his hand.
“Sliver?”
“Yeah, I had a shard of that thing get in, been trying to dig it out, and it’s in there good.” Hank held the palm of his hand to his teeth trying to gnaw.
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, it’ll work its way out, thanks though. Say, you want any more food? I’m still kinda hungry,” He said, voice muffled by his hand.
“I’m good dude.”
Hank’s face locked on mine, not his usual kinda dumb, vacant look, but the look of someone trying to see the hidden drawing in a Magic Eye picture. He lowered his hand and his lips were smeared in blood.
“Dude, you’re bleeding, let me fucking look at that!” I was on my feet before he could register a protest. I snatched his hand from him and held it palm up toward me.
“Oh fuck dude!”
He had torn a hole into the heel of his hand, red blood mixed with white pus with streaks of green, emanating from a shard buried into the muscles, a slight glowing neon. He pulled his hand away with force and stood.
“Don’t.” Hank said. Force in his voice, anger.
“Dude, you’re infected, bad, we gotta hike out here now, and get you a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine, we can hike out in the morning.”
“Fuck you man, let me see the rest of your arm.” He regarded me with that big, stupid, dumb face, eyes hardened in the way old people get when the world passed them by decades ago. I met his gaze. His eyes softened, and he raised his sleeve.
A webwork of green had spidered its way up his arm halfway to the elbow. Blood poisoning, but worse.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and held my shoulder with his good hand. “I swear to God it doesn’t hurt, it just kinda itches.”
I pulled away from him and rummaged through his pack for the bottle of gin. One shaking hand uncapped it, while the other held his infected hand toward me.
“Hold on man,” Hank said, and motioned for the bottle. I handed it to him, and he drank a deep swig, swallowing it with violent coughs. He handed it back to me before doubling over and puking between his legs in a series of harsh wet explosions. The smell of half digested beef stew and rot violated my nose, and when Hank finally stopped puking and laid on his side, I had to get a shovel to fling the stuff out of camp.
Hank curled into a wheezing ball on the ground. Maybe something had gone down the wrong pipe, it happens, get a whiff up the back of your throat and into your nose as the harsh stuff is its way down.
“Let me see your hand,” I said gently to him.
His head was still buried in his chest, but he offered it.
“Hold on buddy, this may sting.”
The first splash of gin landed in the hole in his hand, and began to fizz white bubbles like hydrogen peroxide in a dirty cut. His hand held fast for a few seconds before-
“AHHHHH! AHHH FUCK! IT BURNS! IT FUCKING BURNS!” Hank had batted the bottle from my hand and was on his feet before I could react. Another round of vomiting doubled him over again, forcing him to brace his hands on his knees as blood and green goo hit the ground between his feet.
“Water!” He coughed, and I turned to find his canteen. Then he was gone, crashing through vegetation along a narrow cow path to the creek.
“Hey! Wait!”
I jumped to follow, feeling like a cartoon with legs spinning, feet slipping on the needle cast floor. A branch hit my face as I found the path by the last reach of firelight, before remembering to click on my headlamp. The sound of retching ahead was drowned out by my own heavy breaths and boots pounding on baked soil of the path. Then splashing, glugging, and I found Hank laying in a deeper pool, bad hand buried in the mud, his chin below the waterline, facing upstream he sucked in the dirty brown water like a rat drinking from a water tube.
“Dude! You’re gonna get Giardia, then you’re really gonna be fucked, fucking stop that!” I splashed into the knee deep water, and pulled at him, he shoved me with his good hand and my ass hit the muddy bank, and he continued to drink.
I sat and watched him, uncertain of what to do. Panic was welling in me, the feeling of helplessness, of wishing there was a grownup I could call, that somebody, somewhere, some rancher, or cop, or hiker, or BLM Ranger would see our lights and hear our shouts and come investigate, and bring them with years of expertise. I looked around. A million stars above an empty July landscape, as close to wilderness as one can get without an act of Congress, nobody around, nobody on their way, nobody who would care we were gone until we missed work on Monday morning. I looked back at my friend, desperately drinking cow creek water, as my ass numbed to the cold mud beneath it. And I cried.
Sloshing ripped me back. Hank turned in the creek, his back to the flow and sat down, letting the water wash by him, his back and chest creating eddies around his arm. He held his mud-covered bad hand out of the water, and breathed deep.
“Sorry man, I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice small, like it was when we were kids and his dad had yelled for him from inside the house.
I collected myself, made it to my feet and waded behind him, hooking under his arms to help him stand, and I guided him back to camp. I set him in his chair by the fire, and started to undo his hiking boots.
“No, leave them, please.”
“You’re gonna get hypothermia.”
“It’s hot. I’m feeling better, just let me sit in them for a little bit longer, it feels good.”
“Hank, you’re in trouble man, big trouble, we don’t have cell coverage out here, and I don’t think you can hike out. What if I left now and called for help, I might be able to get Life Flight here by morning.” I said, back to the fire to let my pants dry.
I’m feeling better, I really am, I think the gin went bad or something…but seriously, don’t go out right now, it’s too dangerous to hike at night, and I’ll be able to hike out in the morning with you, I just need some rest.”
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to hike out in the morning, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone overnight. My guts knotted in apprehension. Maybe we could build a bigger fire, maybe somebody would see it and think it’s a wildfire.
“I don’t wanna leave you, but we’re in the middle of nowhere man, the sooner we can get help rolling the better, I’ll go now, I’ll be OK,” I said, not really believing my own closing line.
Hank smiled, and I was struck by the missing gap in his teeth.
“Call it,” he said, and reached into his pocket with his good hand, producing the silver dollar. He held it briefly in his palm before frantically casting it away, like a fire ember had landed in his palm.
“Shit!” he yelped, and drew his hand to his stomach, “Fucker burned me!”
I left the coin where it lay on the dirt, Lady Liberty staring at me in the firelight. There comes a time where there’s no good answers, things are so complex you don’t know where to start to make it better, to fix things. So I left for our tent without a word, intent on finding the first aid kit, at least I could bandage his hand tonight, maybe put some real antiseptic on it, maybe some Benadryl. I had to calm down. Had to think. Had to do something. My friend was sick, maybe really sick, and he was going to get a lot sicker by morning. What time was it? I looked at my phone, 10:04. It gets light early this time of year, I could stay with him overnight, make sure he’s good, and go for help in the morning. We had a big day, lots of driving, the hike was long and hot, he’d drunk a bunch of water, so that’s going to help, stomach bugs take days to set in, so he can get some rest, sleep fixes a lot, I could use some sleep too. And I’d wake up early and tomorrow hike out, and be in the car getting help by the time it starts getting hot. Yeah, that works, in the meantime, I just need to bandage him. He’ll be OK.
I returned and Hank had his bad hand to his face. He lowered it, mouth chewing. His band hand returned to the ground below him, where his dripping clothes had turned the moondust soil to mud, and laid it there. His mouth was smeared in brown, as he awkwardly swallowed.
“Can I have some more water, man?” He asked, words slurred like he had just returned from the dentist.
“What are you eating?” I asked.
His bad hand returned to his mouth, and with it, a pile of mud. He stuffed the mud into his face and began to chew.
“DUDE! SPIT THAT OUT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” I dropped the first aid kit, and sprinted to him, pulling his hand away, and without thinking, stuck two fingers into his mouth to scoop the mud out.
Betrayal and pain surged through my brain as his teeth bit down on my fingers. I pulled back, feeling mud, and saliva, and his tongue mixing with my blood, but he held them.
“LET GO!” I yelled, pulling back harder, feeling give, picturing the skin and muscle separating from bone like a sleeve over a straw. His head pulled back, drawing me closer, and I swear to God, I heard him, felt him, swallow, and then bit harder, releasing more blood, and swallowed again.
I hit him.
I hit him hard, in his eye. I wasn’t thinking. The animal part of my brain took over and said to stop the thing hurting me, and I did. I hit him in the eye, and I him again, and I hit him again, and I felt the bones of my hand crunch against his orbital bone, and I felt both break and I hit him again with a broken hand against a broken skull and I screamed and I thrashed, and he drank.
And he let go, and I fell back, pain and tears and panic, and mud and cold.
Hank looked at me, he smiled, the gap tooth gone, two long fangs for incisors. His good eye a shade of neon green, his broken eyeball weeping neon ooze. He pounced, his weight landing on me hard and knocking the wind out, easily batting away my two disfigured hands for defense. His bad hand ripped the collar of my shirt, and he slowly brought those horrible fangs close to my neck.
Then he stopped.
The green faded from his eye, gazing upon the tarnished silver St. Christopher medal around my neck.
He sat down, collapsed on my feet, pinning me, and looked around, as if uncertain where he was.
“Barb…I’m…sorry.” He said. His eye wept blood and white and green ooze.
“Get away from me!” I yelled and tried to kick out from under his weight.
“Run Barb. I’m sorry. I love you.”
Hank stood, then grabbed my forearm, and pulled me to my feet. I looked at his face, that dumb, stupid face, and saw him, I saw the him that I’d known since we were little. Then I saw the fangs.
And I ran.
By morning I had reached the car. Managed to unlock and start it with my ring and pinky finger and drove until I found a BLM man spraying weeds on the side of the road. He contacted the Sheriff and…I made it out, it’s not important.
I write this now, with two healed hands, as healed as they ever will be, arthritis will come for both in my later years, and post while looking out the window to my garden, neon green ferns growing in the moonlight.
I’m sorry.
I’m so fucking sorry.
For people of the kind I was, of the city, of the sea, the terms “rural” and “wild” are used interchangeably. This is incorrect. “Wild,” denotes an area primarily ruled by nature, by God, perhaps managed by men, though they are transients through its lands. “Rural,” is part of society, of civilization, a frontier in the kingdom of men, though still nominally under its control.
Though the unknown of nature may hold lopsided power, in the rural areas, man yet plants his flag of territorial control, with litter.
“Hey! You can’t be doing that!” Copeland said over the buffeting drag of the open car window, the empty aluminum can bouncing behind us on asphalt and shoulder gravel, sounding a hollow honeymoon of coworkers joined for the day. I rolled the window up when I saw the can rest beside a discarded and broken rearview mirror.
“Seriously, Meredith, what the fuck? I have a trash bag in the back!”
I didn’t know him well, perhaps I’d seen his name on email chains. Though his name was a common one, and his face was a common one, and his jeans and plaid shirt were also common ones. His interests, as discussed, on the two hour drive from the airport, were common ones.
“This land has no beauty to mar. I am adapting to local custom,” I replied at length.
“We’re in a government vehicle, try to act like it,” he said. We were in a rental, not owned by the Agency, or leased through GSA. Though a small point of order, an omitted detail nonetheless. Copeland wafted an air of righteousness and sloppiness, a familiar combination in myself, I will admit, though earned with me.
“We’re close,” he continued. “Guess I should have asked, did you get a chance to look over the file I sent?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
Air through the nose, lips pursed. A man easy to anger, used to giving orders. A Captain in the Army when he was recruited, and allowed to finish his Masters. A family man, husband to an anesthesiologist in Atlanta, if I recall. Two children, sons, hockey players, though they were young and uninteresting, as all children are.
“So you’re content to go in blind? I heard you’re reckless, I was there for the clean up on that stunt you pulled last year, thought you’d learned your lesson,” he said it with malice, condescension, hollow thoughts manifested into sound, lost, diffused into road noise and air conditioned recirculated atmosphere.
“As per protocol, I am here to assist in an auxiliary role. This is your investigation, Agent Copeland. I would not approve of another agent inserting themselves into one of my own investigations, and I will extend you the same courtesy.”
“That’s…that’s not how this works. Jesus, you *are* a loose cannon.”
A narrow hand reached for the center console, wrapping around a white Monster energy. Small hands, the kind whose strength is formed in the gyms and mats, a giveaway of his education, occupation.
“We received a report of an anomaly, posted on a public forum. Similar to one from the early 90s,” the chemical fruit washed down his throat between words, fuel for syllables, for sounds. I watched the flatland fields, corn I believe, fed by ditches here in this 1,000 year flood plain, their perfect rows perpendicular to the road, stretching to a moving central point in the distance field end, giving it the appearance it was walking alongside the rental on its side, like a spider, an octopus, jumping over dirt canals and continuing its escort.
“Aerial or ground level?” I asked.
“Ground.”
A buzz, my phone, the personal one:
*You think you have shitty day:*
A picture of a white pickup, one tire submerged to the axle in mud, evidence of digging, scraps of wood and green bows around it.
I responded:
*What happened?*
The phone responded:
*Walked 6 miles uphill to the yarder fuckn spring popped up haddaget pulled out by a skidder they gonna make fun me for next month be careful ill call you later if your around miss you*
I responded:
*Please be careful, I will call you later tonight, miss you too.*
“...early 90s in New York, in a storeroom, bunch of burnouts found it, don’t know how long this one’s been active.”
Copeland drained the last of his Monster, snaked his plaid LL Bean arm between the seats and deposited it in a plastic grocery bag hanging behind the passenger seat.
“You have not seen it?” I asked.
“No, first assessment. This was in the file, but since you’re too badass to read stuff, we’re going in as the Department of Water Quality. Try not to say anything.”
“It is better to be truthful, or lie through omission. Are you familiar with the Department of Water Quality in this state? Does this state have one?”
“The hell you talking about? Indications are this guy runs a junkyard, he’ll expect to hear from someone with the Department of Water Quality, and it won’t raise suspicion,” he said, more defensively than he should. Interesting reaction, Copeland.
“He is likely familiar with them then, and self taught on regulations therein. Apt to quote regulations, or misquote them, which will either reveal us as fools or imposters. You are more likely to raise suspicion if he believes you are not who you say you are. But, this is not my investigation. Your handling is none of my concern.”
“Save it for the rookies. Oh wait, you got removed from Training command already.” I watched the corner of his lips for a rise, there was none. Said with malice, meant as malice.
“You say what you believe, Agent Copeland, a plain spoken man. I respect your candor,” I said truthfully.
Intersecting the main county road, a dirt drive, private. *Junkman’s Lament*, hand painted with red house paint on unfinished and weathered plywood. About one hundred meters away, a clump of trees, cottonwoods, I believe, shaded an older farm house, and obscured the view of an older wooded barn, an island of wood in an algae pond of alfalfa.
“This is the correct place?” I asked.
“Yeah, didn’t you read the sign?” Copeland responded, still snippy.
Gravel crunched under slowly turned wheels, speeds minimal to suppress dust. A man once told me he hated the open fields of the plains in the way he hated the oceans, for there were no boundaries, nothing to establish one’s scale as a mountain mars the horizon. There is peace in the flatness, tranquility of knowing how insignificant you are, how small we are compared to the ultimate power of God, and the sea, and lands such as this, are there to remind us. The man worshipped different gods, he said, and that is understandable.
Copeland parked the car next to an 80s model Ford pickup, immaculate for its age. An antique Ford tractor sat in the shade of a large tree, similarly clean, though with extension cords running from the house, connecting to an air compressor tank, and an open tool box. The yard was in good order, outbuildings neat, hoses and hand tools hung or lined against the walls. Gone was the usual detritus of aged rural houses, the typical accumulation of vehicles purchased, used, and left in a field to rust, or broken parts removed and left to rot among tall grasses and mud, of an accumulation of a lifetime’s worth of items, and attention spans.
“It is very clean,” I said.
“Yeah…” Copeland replied. A dullard of personality and deed, but of intellect and observation, he was keen. “...where’s the junk?”
Silence for my response, for to say anything would be speculation, and I do not make a habit of speculation with insufficient data.
Copeland parked in front of a wrought iron yard gate that joined two halves of a wire panel fence. The clock display on the dash read 5:40 PM. The summer sun still perched, its full fury basking the land in hairdryer heat. It met me as I opened the door, dry, continental, light heat, enjoyable insofar as heat can be.
“I’m closed, but if you got something, you can drop it off,” a voice from the rear of the house, male, sand-in-shoe warble of the elderly. “There’s a can by the gate, put a dollar in, or come back tomorrow and pay it back.”
Copeland stepped out, lanky legs approaching the gate before the car door closed.
“My name is Douglas Sanders, I’m with the Department of Water Quality, here for an inspection of your business.” Business-like, professional, the exact way to speak to someone that activates defensiveness. I stood, closed my door, and leaned against it, allowing the heat to transfer through my fingers.
“Who? Sanders? Come around the back, we can talk,” the voice shouted. Copeland turned back toward me, nodding to follow him. His plaid shirt was tucked into his jeans. No imprint of a gun visible at his waistline, impressive for his slim runner’s build. I made a note to ask him about his concealment method when this finished.
Stone steps deviated from Roosevelt era concrete sidewalk, yellow, perhaps sandstone, placed years ago, sinking further into the lawn with each year’s wet season and seasonal mud, then hardened during its baking summers. Manicured rose bushes against the outer house wall, window sills adorned with small plants and cups, knickknacks of false femininity. The backyard was a few strips of grass, dominated by a wooden toolshed, beyond it a pond, perhaps 30x30 meters, cattails along the western edge, a wood pier constructed three meters into the depth, and an antique clawfoot bathtub at its terminus.
“Come on out, wood’ll hold ya,” the elderly voice echoing from inside the tub.
“I’d prefer to meet you on land,” Copeland said. He had stopped shy of the pier, arms folded.
“Aw hell, you new? What happened to Barry? I liked that guy, he’d come-” two elbows clad in red fabric unfolded from within, and placed themselves on the edge of the tub, pulling its body upward, like the hatching larvae of a mosquito, “-e’ry month and check to see the samples, and we’d get to talkin’ about bullshit and that Cougar he was working on, wondering if I had any new parts, you replace him? Shame he didn’t say goodbye.”
He braced his stained and weathered hands against the edge of the tub and pushed downward, helping him to stand. He turned and faced us, a ragged white beard reaching mid chest, below a green Vietnam era boonie hat. His rail thin frame struggled to contain the distended stomach of a heavy drinker, a ratty union suit undone along the stomach from buttons long failed against the strain.
“Nothin’ happened to Barry, we’re checking on some other things,” Copeland said, his voice cadence having switched to a more Northeastern tone.
The old man’s attention turned to me with one eye forced wide, as the other squinted.
“Ma’am, don’t believe we met either,” jovial, in the perpetual half-intoxicated way every elderly human speaks.
“We have not,” I spoke flatly, favoring the flat monotone, a level line appealing to the ear just as the level sea’s horizon appeals to the eye. His attention to me performed, he returned Copeland.
“Well go ahead and check then, you know where them measuring devices is, and don’t you coming around to put none of that Fluoride bullshit in my water, I told Barry when we first met, no funny business with the Fluoride. And excuse us, me and Westmoreland was gonna have us a meal ‘fore too long,” he raised one leg, a creaking knee articulated a bare foot from the tub to the ground, followed by the other, his toes gripped the rough wood of the dock as he shuffled toward us, his gait indicating a bad hip.
“This is about something different, we received a report of a, uh, a thing, someone said that you have this opening that someone saw, and they couldn’t really explain it, and we were curious about that, whether it leads to ground water or not.” Copeland said. I cocked my head at his abandonment of his own cover story so quickly.
“The Fun Hole? Where’d you hear about that?” the old man made no changes in his voice.
“I got wise associates, sometimes they talk. My boss wanted to get some eyes before we do business,” Copeland said, the interesting dullard, indeed.
“Sure, sure, lemme go grab it, now l gotta tell you, me and Westmoreland don’t care about what you’re putting in there, but I got a deal for the people around here, but for outta towners, and I do business with all you guys, I gotta charge a little extra, you know, 100 bucks to keep the feds off. Goddamn feds, you know, CIA spooks, lost more buddies to them than Charlie with all that bullshit Agent Orange they were putting out, and I don’t need them coming around here asking their questions.”
My eyebrow below my sunglasses. Copeland’s water cover’s flimsiness was intentional, my preference as announcing ourselves under the vague term “agent” would have likely backfired. Well done, Copeland.
“Course,” he said, as he approached the back door to the shed, “I do business with all you boys, Gambinos, Triads, Yakuza, Soviets, Cartels, like I said, me and Westmoreland don’t care, 100 bucks, whatever you got, course, I don’t know you guys, and nothing against you, but Westmoreland gets on me for being too casual, so he insists.”
Copeland chanced a glance toward me, eyebrows raised over his aviators. I cocked my head in response. A convergence point for underworld and spies raises jurisdictional issues. Direct action could not be taken today, though additional surveillance would be required.
“But, I like the way you look son, and the way you look ma’am,” he winked at me, “I’ll give you a peak of business.”
He opened the lid of an aluminum trashcan and dropped it on the ground, grass muffling the clatter. He produced a folded red and white blanket. Carefully he picked it up, then placed it on the ground and began to unfold. I watched him, my attention drawn to the blanket for reasons I did not know how to articulate at the time, a compulsion perhaps, a curiosity, a…depth. As each panel was peeled back, I realized the blanket was of two colors, red with white lettering, perhaps indicating a University of Nebraska logo, but the other side was black. Blacker than black. Fuligin darkness, the absence of light, the absence of anything lay sprawled on the grass beside the aluminum trash can. I cocked my head in genuine curiosity.
“That isn’t dye is it?” Copeland’s voice betraying a similar level of fascination to mine.
“No, that’s the Fun Hole, see,” the old man bent, picking up a pebble from the edge of the grass, and dropping it into the darkness. It fell out of sight.
My eyes and Copeland’s met, each of us calculating protocols. I matched his subtle nod, before returning my gaze to the abyss on the blanket. Nothing. A perfect circle of nothing. The absence. Abandonment of even the atoms of God’s creation. To peer into, to touch its void, to disappear in the absence of senses, of thought, of malice and longing and regret and joy. To touch its void. To touch its void.
The sound of retching snapped my gaze back to the old man. He leaned his back against the door, bent over, mouth open toward the ground. He wretched again, streams of viscous dark bile splattered to the grass. He drew a breath and heaved, muscles audible contracting as a larger purge of liquid was forced out his gut, he fell to his knees, the stream turning red with blood, then to a dark blue. Splashing interrupted by plops as solid matter breached the canal of his teeth and lips and washed onto the saturated ground. A dozen plops. A dozen flopping things, coated in the afterbirth of black blood and half-digested corn kernels.
“What the fuck!” Copeland exclaimed, simultaneously lifting his pant leg as he kneeled. Ankle holster, that’s how he concealed his firearm.
The flopping things, unfurled folded fin-like appendages, no, rudimentary wings, then launched themselves, beating air with catfish tails, hitting the ground in front of us, rolling onto the grass.
“Sorry, it’s a formality, but don’t hurt ‘em, you hurt one, they hurt ya, got a business to run,” the old man said, spitting a stream of blood and blue liquid, tipped back a bottle of whiskey, downing several desperate glugs.
One of the creatures pushed itself toward my foot. Its similarity to a carp fascinated me, though its eyes opened to voids, its mouth a small trunk, sucking blades of grass along the ground. The scaleless thing glistened in the sun. Priests of Levi would call it an abomination, but it’s eyes, such beauty they beheld. Like the hole in the blanket there was nothing, not window to a soulless creature. I wished to touch one, willing myself to kneel, but the primate portion of my brain seized me, willing my hand closer to my belt, locking my knees in an easy bend, but no further.
“Don’t see that every day,” Copeland said, recovered enough now to out himself as a quipper.
“Now,” the old man said, between mouthfuls of whiskey, “You let ‘em take a look at ya, and we can do business.
Four of the creatures gathered around my feet, noisily feeding on grass and dirt equally, fork-tined dorsal fins shaking tangled dark red clots. I begged myself to allow me to touch them, to pick one up and hold it high above my head, to show it to God Himself and bask in His astonishment at these things that had escaped His own notice. My hand instead rested against the butt of my pistol inside my waistband, concealed behind my blouse.
“Whoa, hey, now, what the fu-” Copeland’s voice silenced, I turned to see one of the creatures had jumped onto his head, securing its trunk-like mouth around his nose, arms frozen in an aborted defensive position, his eyes hollow and vacant.
My left hand lifted the right corner of my blouse at the same time my right hand wrapped around the frame of my FNP. The barrel had no sooner cleared my holster when I felt a heavy impact on my back, cold water moisture soaking through the shirt, and a scaleless prodding.
“Put that ‘way ma’am.” Needle pricks, dozens perhaps, gently touching my skin, though not breaking it.
“Little fuckers bite, put it away, you won’t need it.”
“What are you doing to my partner?” I asked, not lowering the gun, though not aiming at the old man either.
“Ol’ Westmoreland says I gotta test ya, and I agree,” he drained the last of the plastic pint of whiskey and tossed it in the hole. “Can’t drink with those little fuckers in there, Westmoreland won’t let me.”
“Remove the creature from my back.”
Copeland continued to stare ahead as the creature wiggled around his nose, flopping against his open mouth.
“He’s almost done, gotta look at you, see what you’re thinking, reads your mind. You’re safe ma’am, I don’t look at what broads are thinking, did it a couple times, and it’s a jumbled mess in there, told Westmoreland, ‘bah, rather look at ‘em than listen to-’” He cut off midsentence as the same force that had seized Copeland claimed the old man, his eyes hollow and he stared blankly ahead, for before snapping back to me, his wrinkled face a portrait of elderly, ignorant rage.
“You sonsofbitches are from the Company! Come to finish the job just like they did with Sharon Tate! Westmoreland! Westmoreland! They found us! Just like you said!” I heard the old man shout.
My gun inched upward, and the teeth of the creature on my back broke skin. Agony seized me, and I fell backward on instinct, hoping to crush the beautiful thing latched upon me. Seeming to sense it was in danger, the creature bit harder, needled teeth bouncing upon bone, like a tattoo artist’s gun. But I fell, and ground met the creature before it met me, and the agony of the precision teeth was exchanged for the agony of shredded bones digging into my back. I rolled, and more of the creatures were upon me.
A creature landed on my face, rocking my head against the ground, wet, and moplike, slithered against my cheek as I saw its sucker mouth prodding against my sunglasses. In desperation, I knocked it away, just as another landed on my shoulder, and I smashed it with the butt of my pistol before it could bite. Not so for the one that had attached itself to my jeans, and its teeth punched through the denim and into my calf muscle. Another landed on my forearm.
I have been in dire situations, my record, both official and medical, shows this, and there have been situations where I have felt the waves of panic begin to lift me, then crash me down, gripping me in the riptide and pulling me away from myself. Never have I given in, however. Yet, as my body blazed with hundreds of individual points of pain spread throughout, I felt myself succumb to panic’s pull, and I thrashed. Thrashed against the ground, against the creatures, against the scaleless slime, and against the rocks among the grass, against the jutting bones, and bile blood, and three quarters digested contents of their stomachs. My fists punching air, and creature, and ground, and myself, the air that escaped my lungs squeezing into an animal shriek of pain and disgust. Though not at the creatures, at myself.
And then, a splash from the pond drew me back to myself, and the biting ceased.
Hovering in the air above the dock was a catfish, godlike in its proportions, four meters long, a mouth a meter wide. Grey sides and yellow belly floated toward us, and the creatures, those that could, flew to it, latching their mouths onto its massive side. I saw Copeland, rise from the ground to one knee, and draw his weapon, his nose torn and bleeding, numerous rips on his jeans and shirt, blood freely flowing onto the fabric.
“You sonsofbitches wouldn’t let us win so you could push dope, you pinko CIA freaks!” the old man yelled, and raised his hands above his head like a diver in prayer.
The massive fish opened its mouth, but where there should have been tongue and teeth, was only void. Fuligin blackness. It flew to the old man at astonishing speed, arcing through the air and landing in a ballistic arc, swallowing the old man down to his knees.
“And you killed JFK! And killed that poor girl at Chappaquiddick!” The voice seemingly from inside the blanket hole.
Two gnarled old man fists emerged from the blanket hole, and both middle fingers raised before the giant fish swam through the air and disappeared into the void in the blanket.
“What the fuck was that?” Copeland asked, still kneeling.
I collapsed on the ground, in silence, save for the constant ringing in my ears, and my own heartbeat pumping blood through dozens of open wounds.
“We lack an adequate cipher to understand.”
For people of the kind I was, of the city, of the sea, the terms “rural” and “wild” are used interchangeably. This is incorrect. “Wild,” denotes an area primarily ruled by nature, by God, perhaps managed by men, though they are transients through its lands. “Rural,” is part of society, of civilization, a frontier in the kingdom of men, though still nominally under its control.
Though the unknown of nature may hold lopsided power, in the rural areas, man yet plants his flag of territorial control, with litter.
“Hey! You can’t be doing that!” Copeland said over the buffeting drag of the open car window, the empty aluminum can bouncing behind us on asphalt and shoulder gravel, sounding a hollow honeymoon of coworkers joined for the day. I rolled the window up when I saw the can rest beside a discarded and broken rearview mirror.
“Seriously, Meredith, what the fuck? I have a trash bag in the back!”
I didn’t know him well, perhaps I’d seen his name on email chains. Though his name was a common one, and his face was a common one, and his jeans and plaid shirt were also common ones. His interests, as discussed, on the two hour drive from the airport, were common ones.
“This land has no beauty to mar. I am adapting to local custom,” I replied at length.
“We’re in a government vehicle, try to act like it,” he said. We were in a rental, not owned by the Agency, or leased through GSA. Though a small point of order, an omitted detail nonetheless. Copeland wafted an air of righteousness and sloppiness, a familiar combination in myself, I will admit, though earned with me.
“We’re close,” he continued. “Guess I should have asked, did you get a chance to look over the file I sent?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
Air through the nose, lips pursed. A man easy to anger, used to giving orders. A Captain in the Army when he was recruited, and allowed to finish his Masters. A family man, husband to an anesthesiologist in Atlanta, if I recall. Two children, sons, hockey players, though they were young and uninteresting, as all children are.
“So you’re content to go in blind? I heard you’re reckless, I was there for the clean up on that stunt you pulled last year, thought you’d learned your lesson,” he said it with malice, condescension, hollow thoughts manifested into sound, lost, diffused into road noise and air conditioned recirculated atmosphere.
“As per protocol, I am here to assist in an auxiliary role. This is your investigation, Agent Copeland. I would not approve of another agent inserting themselves into one of my own investigations, and I will extend you the same courtesy.”
“That’s…that’s not how this works. Jesus, you *are* a loose cannon.”
A narrow hand reached for the center console, wrapping around a white Monster energy. Small hands, the kind whose strength is formed in the gyms and mats, a giveaway of his education, occupation.
“We received a report of an anomaly, posted on a public forum. Similar to one from the early 90s,” the chemical fruit washed down his throat between words, fuel for syllables, for sounds. I watched the flatland fields, corn I believe, fed by ditches here in this 1,000 year flood plain, their perfect rows perpendicular to the road, stretching to a moving central point in the distance field end, giving it the appearance it was walking alongside the rental on its side, like a spider, an octopus, jumping over dirt canals and continuing its escort.
“Aerial or ground level?” I asked.
“Ground.”
A buzz, my phone, the personal one:
*You think you have shitty day:*
A picture of a white pickup, one tire submerged to the axle in mud, evidence of digging, scraps of wood and green bows around it.
I responded:
*What happened?*
The phone responded:
*Walked 6 miles uphill to the yarder fuckn spring popped up haddaget pulled out by a skidder they gonna make fun me for next month be careful ill call you later if your around miss you*
I responded:
*Please be careful, I will call you later tonight, miss you too.*
“...early 90s in New York, in a storeroom, bunch of burnouts found it, don’t know how long this one’s been active.”
Copeland drained the last of his Monster, snaked his plaid LL Bean arm between the seats and deposited it in a plastic grocery bag hanging behind the passenger seat.
“You have not seen it?” I asked.
“No, first assessment. This was in the file, but since you’re too badass to read stuff, we’re going in as the Department of Water Quality. Try not to say anything.”
“It is better to be truthful, or lie through omission. Are you familiar with the Department of Water Quality in this state? Does this state have one?”
“The hell you talking about? Indications are this guy runs a junkyard, he’ll expect to hear from someone with the Department of Water Quality, and it won’t raise suspicion,” he said, more defensively than he should. Interesting reaction, Copeland.
“He is likely familiar with them then, and self taught on regulations therein. Apt to quote regulations, or misquote them, which will either reveal us as fools or imposters. You are more likely to raise suspicion if he believes you are not who you say you are. But, this is not my investigation. Your handling is none of my concern.”
“Save it for the rookies. Oh wait, you got removed from Training command already.” I watched the corner of his lips for a rise, there was none. Said with malice, meant as malice.
“You say what you believe, Agent Copeland, a plain spoken man. I respect your candor,” I said truthfully.
Intersecting the main county road, a dirt drive, private. *Junkman’s Lament*, hand painted with red house paint on unfinished and weathered plywood. About one hundred meters away, a clump of trees, cottonwoods, I believe, shaded an older farm house, and obscured the view of an older wooded barn, an island of wood in an algae pond of alfalfa.
“This is the correct place?” I asked.
“Yeah, didn’t you read the sign?” Copeland responded, still snippy.
Gravel crunched under slowly turned wheels, speeds minimal to suppress dust. A man once told me he hated the open fields of the plains in the way he hated the oceans, for there were no boundaries, nothing to establish one’s scale as a mountain mars the horizon. There is peace in the flatness, tranquility of knowing how insignificant you are, how small we are compared to the ultimate power of God, and the sea, and lands such as this, are there to remind us. The man worshipped different gods, he said, and that is understandable.
Copeland parked the car next to an 80s model Ford pickup, immaculate for its age. An antique Ford tractor sat in the shade of a large tree, similarly clean, though with extension cords running from the house, connecting to an air compressor tank, and an open tool box. The yard was in good order, outbuildings neat, hoses and hand tools hung or lined against the walls. Gone was the usual detritus of aged rural houses, the typical accumulation of vehicles purchased, used, and left in a field to rust, or broken parts removed and left to rot among tall grasses and mud, of an accumulation of a lifetime’s worth of items, and attention spans.
“It is very clean,” I said.
“Yeah…” Copeland replied. A dullard of personality and deed, but of intellect and observation, he was keen. “...where’s the junk?”
Silence for my response, for to say anything would be speculation, and I do not make a habit of speculation with insufficient data.
Copeland parked in front of a wrought iron yard gate that joined two halves of a wire panel fence. The clock display on the dash read 5:40 PM. The summer sun still perched, its full fury basking the land in hairdryer heat. It met me as I opened the door, dry, continental, light heat, enjoyable insofar as heat can be.
“I’m closed, but if you got something, you can drop it off,” a voice from the rear of the house, male, sand-in-shoe warble of the elderly. “There’s a can by the gate, put a dollar in, or come back tomorrow and pay it back.”
Copeland stepped out, lanky legs approaching the gate before the car door closed.
“My name is Douglas Sanders, I’m with the Department of Water Quality, here for an inspection of your business.” Business-like, professional, the exact way to speak to someone that activates defensiveness. I stood, closed my door, and leaned against it, allowing the heat to transfer through my fingers.
“Who? Sanders? Come around the back, we can talk,” the voice shouted. Copeland turned back toward me, nodding to follow him. His plaid shirt was tucked into his jeans. No imprint of a gun visible at his waistline, impressive for his slim runner’s build. I made a note to ask him about his concealment method when this finished.
Stone steps deviated from Roosevelt era concrete sidewalk, yellow, perhaps sandstone, placed years ago, sinking further into the lawn with each year’s wet season and seasonal mud, then hardened during its baking summers. Manicured rose bushes against the outer house wall, window sills adorned with small plants and cups, knickknacks of false femininity. The backyard was a few strips of grass, dominated by a wooden toolshed, beyond it a pond, perhaps 30x30 meters, cattails along the western edge, a wood pier constructed three meters into the depth, and an antique clawfoot bathtub at its terminus.
“Come on out, wood’ll hold ya,” the elderly voice echoing from inside the tub.
“I’d prefer to meet you on land,” Copeland said. He had stopped shy of the pier, arms folded.
“Aw hell, you new? What happened to Barry? I liked that guy, he’d come-” two elbows clad in red fabric unfolded from within, and placed themselves on the edge of the tub, pulling its body upward, like the hatching larvae of a mosquito, “-e’ry month and check to see the samples, and we’d get to talkin’ about bullshit and that Cougar he was working on, wondering if I had any new parts, you replace him? Shame he didn’t say goodbye.”
He braced his stained and weathered hands against the edge of the tub and pushed downward, helping him to stand. He turned and faced us, a ragged white beard reaching mid chest, below a green Vietnam era boonie hat. His rail thin frame struggled to contain the distended stomach of a heavy drinker, a ratty union suit undone along the stomach from buttons long failed against the strain.
“Nothin’ happened to Barry, we’re checking on some other things,” Copeland said, his voice cadence having switched to a more Northeastern tone.
The old man’s attention turned to me with one eye forced wide, as the other squinted.
“Ma’am, don’t believe we met either,” jovial, in the perpetual half-intoxicated way every elderly human speaks.
“We have not,” I spoke flatly, favoring the flat monotone, a level line appealing to the ear just as the level sea’s horizon appeals to the eye. His attention to me performed, he returned Copeland.
“Well go ahead and check then, you know where them measuring devices is, and don’t you coming around to put none of that Fluoride bullshit in my water, I told Barry when we first met, no funny business with the Fluoride. And excuse us, me and Westmoreland was gonna have us a meal ‘fore too long,” he raised one leg, a creaking knee articulated a bare foot from the tub to the ground, followed by the other, his toes gripped the rough wood of the dock as he shuffled toward us, his gait indicating a bad hip.
“This is about something different, we received a report of a, uh, a thing, someone said that you have this opening that someone saw, and they couldn’t really explain it, and we were curious about that, whether it leads to ground water or not.” Copeland said. I cocked my head at his abandonment of his own cover story so quickly.
“The Fun Hole? Where’d you hear about that?” the old man made no changes in his voice.
“I got wise associates, sometimes they talk. My boss wanted to get some eyes before we do business,” Copeland said, the interesting dullard, indeed.
“Sure, sure, lemme go grab it, now l gotta tell you, me and Westmoreland don’t care about what you’re putting in there, but I got a deal for the people around here, but for outta towners, and I do business with all you guys, I gotta charge a little extra, you know, 100 bucks to keep the feds off. Goddamn feds, you know, CIA spooks, lost more buddies to them than Charlie with all that bullshit Agent Orange they were putting out, and I don’t need them coming around here asking their questions.”
My eyebrow below my sunglasses. Copeland’s water cover’s flimsiness was intentional, my preference as announcing ourselves under the vague term “agent” would have likely backfired. Well done, Copeland.
“Course,” he said, as he approached the back door to the shed, “I do business with all you boys, Gambinos, Triads, Yakuza, Soviets, Cartels, like I said, me and Westmoreland don’t care, 100 bucks, whatever you got, course, I don’t know you guys, and nothing against you, but Westmoreland gets on me for being too casual, so he insists.”
Copeland chanced a glance toward me, eyebrows raised over his aviators. I cocked my head in response. A convergence point for underworld and spies raises jurisdictional issues. Direct action could not be taken today, though additional surveillance would be required.
“But, I like the way you look son, and the way you look ma’am,” he winked at me, “I’ll give you a peak of business.”
He opened the lid of an aluminum trashcan and dropped it on the ground, grass muffling the clatter. He produced a folded red and white blanket. Carefully he picked it up, then placed it on the ground and began to unfold. I watched him, my attention drawn to the blanket for reasons I did not know how to articulate at the time, a compulsion perhaps, a curiosity, a…depth. As each panel was peeled back, I realized the blanket was of two colors, red with white lettering, perhaps indicating a University of Nebraska logo, but the other side was black. Blacker than black. Fuligin darkness, the absence of light, the absence of anything lay sprawled on the grass beside the aluminum trash can. I cocked my head in genuine curiosity.
“That isn’t dye is it?” Copeland’s voice betraying a similar level of fascination to mine.
“No, that’s the Fun Hole, see,” the old man bent, picking up a pebble from the edge of the grass, and dropping it into the darkness. It fell out of sight.
My eyes and Copeland’s met, each of us calculating protocols. I matched his subtle nod, before returning my gaze to the abyss on the blanket. Nothing. A perfect circle of nothing. The absence. Abandonment of even the atoms of God’s creation. To peer into, to touch its void, to disappear in the absence of senses, of thought, of malice and longing and regret and joy. To touch its void. To touch its void.
The sound of retching snapped my gaze back to the old man. He leaned his back against the door, bent over, mouth open toward the ground. He wretched again, streams of viscous dark bile splattered to the grass. He drew a breath and heaved, muscles audible contracting as a larger purge of liquid was forced out his gut, he fell to his knees, the stream turning red with blood, then to a dark blue. Splashing interrupted by plops as solid matter breached the canal of his teeth and lips and washed onto the saturated ground. A dozen plops. A dozen flopping things, coated in the afterbirth of black blood and half-digested corn kernels.
“What the fuck!” Copeland exclaimed, simultaneously lifting his pant leg as he kneeled. Ankle holster, that’s how he concealed his firearm.
The flopping things, unfurled folded fin-like appendages, no, rudimentary wings, then launched themselves, beating air with catfish tails, hitting the ground in front of us, rolling onto the grass.
“Sorry, it’s a formality, but don’t hurt ‘em, you hurt one, they hurt ya, got a business to run,” the old man said, spitting a stream of blood and blue liquid, tipped back a bottle of whiskey, downing several desperate glugs.
One of the creatures pushed itself toward my foot. Its similarity to a carp fascinated me, though its eyes opened to voids, its mouth a small trunk, sucking blades of grass along the ground. The scaleless thing glistened in the sun. Priests of Levi would call it an abomination, but it’s eyes, such beauty they beheld. Like the hole in the blanket there was nothing, not window to a soulless creature. I wished to touch one, willing myself to kneel, but the primate portion of my brain seized me, willing my hand closer to my belt, locking my knees in an easy bend, but no further.
“Don’t see that every day,” Copeland said, recovered enough now to out himself as a quipper.
“Now,” the old man said, between mouthfuls of whiskey, “You let ‘em take a look at ya, and we can do business.
Four of the creatures gathered around my feet, noisily feeding on grass and dirt equally, fork-tined dorsal fins shaking tangled dark red clots. I begged myself to allow me to touch them, to pick one up and hold it high above my head, to show it to God Himself and bask in His astonishment at these things that had escaped His own notice. My hand instead rested against the butt of my pistol inside my waistband, concealed behind my blouse.
“Whoa, hey, now, what the fu-” Copeland’s voice silenced, I turned to see one of the creatures had jumped onto his head, securing its trunk-like mouth around his nose, arms frozen in an aborted defensive position, his eyes hollow and vacant.
My left hand lifted the right corner of my blouse at the same time my right hand wrapped around the frame of my FNP. The barrel had no sooner cleared my holster when I felt a heavy impact on my back, cold water moisture soaking through the shirt, and a scaleless prodding.
“Put that ‘way ma’am.” Needle pricks, dozens perhaps, gently touching my skin, though not breaking it.
“Little fuckers bite, put it away, you won’t need it.”
“What are you doing to my partner?” I asked, not lowering the gun, though not aiming at the old man either.
“Ol’ Westmoreland says I gotta test ya, and I agree,” he drained the last of the plastic pint of whiskey and tossed it in the hole. “Can’t drink with those little fuckers in there, Westmoreland won’t let me.”
“Remove the creature from my back.”
Copeland continued to stare ahead as the creature wiggled around his nose, flopping against his open mouth.
“He’s almost done, gotta look at you, see what you’re thinking, reads your mind. You’re safe ma’am, I don’t look at what broads are thinking, did it a couple times, and it’s a jumbled mess in there, told Westmoreland, ‘bah, rather look at ‘em than listen to-’” He cut off midsentence as the same force that had seized Copeland claimed the old man, his eyes hollow and he stared blankly ahead, for before snapping back to me, his wrinkled face a portrait of elderly, ignorant rage.
“You sonsofbitches are from the Company! Come to finish the job just like they did with Sharon Tate! Westmoreland! Westmoreland! They found us! Just like you said!” I heard the old man shout.
My gun inched upward, and the teeth of the creature on my back broke skin. Agony seized me, and I fell backward on instinct, hoping to crush the beautiful thing latched upon me. Seeming to sense it was in danger, the creature bit harder, needled teeth bouncing upon bone, like a tattoo artist’s gun. But I fell, and ground met the creature before it met me, and the agony of the precision teeth was exchanged for the agony of shredded bones digging into my back. I rolled, and more of the creatures were upon me.
A creature landed on my face, rocking my head against the ground, wet, and moplike, slithered against my cheek as I saw its sucker mouth prodding against my sunglasses. In desperation, I knocked it away, just as another landed on my shoulder, and I smashed it with the butt of my pistol before it could bite. Not so for the one that had attached itself to my jeans, and its teeth punched through the denim and into my calf muscle. Another landed on my forearm.
I have been in dire situations, my record, both official and medical, shows this, and there have been situations where I have felt the waves of panic begin to lift me, then crash me down, gripping me in the riptide and pulling me away from myself. Never have I given in, however. Yet, as my body blazed with hundreds of individual points of pain spread throughout, I felt myself succumb to panic’s pull, and I thrashed. Thrashed against the ground, against the creatures, against the scaleless slime, and against the rocks among the grass, against the jutting bones, and bile blood, and three quarters digested contents of their stomachs. My fists punching air, and creature, and ground, and myself, the air that escaped my lungs squeezing into an animal shriek of pain and disgust. Though not at the creatures, at myself.
And then, a splash from the pond drew me back to myself, and the biting ceased.
Hovering in the air above the dock was a catfish, godlike in its proportions, four meters long, a mouth a meter wide. Grey sides and yellow belly floated toward us, and the creatures, those that could, flew to it, latching their mouths onto its massive side. I saw Copeland, rise from the ground to one knee, and draw his weapon, his nose torn and bleeding, numerous rips on his jeans and shirt, blood freely flowing onto the fabric.
“You sonsofbitches wouldn’t let us win so you could push dope, you pinko CIA freaks!” the old man yelled, and raised his hands above his head like a diver in prayer.
The massive fish opened its mouth, but where there should have been tongue and teeth, was only void. Fuligin blackness. It flew to the old man at astonishing speed, arcing through the air and landing in a ballistic arc, swallowing the old man down to his knees.
“And you killed JFK! And killed that poor girl at Chappaquiddick!” The voice seemingly from inside the blanket hole.
Two gnarled old man fists emerged from the blanket hole, and both middle fingers raised before the giant fish swam through the air and disappeared into the void in the blanket.
“What the fuck was that?” Copeland asked, still kneeling.
I collapsed on the ground, in silence, save for the constant ringing in my ears, and my own heartbeat pumping blood through dozens of open wounds.
“We lack an adequate cipher to understand.”