The Ghosts of Promising Lies

I insist on building cities in my mind
My only material: time
Mark the spot that I found
With a hole in the ground
In a place only I can find

On shaky foundations I raise intricate walls
Filled with empty rooms and dead-end halls
Find a handsome door to stop and stand
And fumble with a pile of keys in my hand
Match the key to the lock by the pattern of rust
Twist, turn and open, greet a buttress of dust

Make plans for the future
Put signs over the door
Spin scandalous schemes
And map out the floor
Furnish with fancies
Snatched out of their soar

Conceive a daydream in a lusty embrace
Impregnate a whim and abandon the place
Lock it up tight, move onto the next
Until the rooms are full of discarded rejects

Cross the street to a greener plot
Build again upon an empty lot
Over and over, as the city spreads wide
Filled with the ghosts of promising lies

The Crit List

Jack walked out the door and stopped at the top of the steps that led to the entrance to her 42nd street row house. It didn’t close behind him; she didn’t bother to follow him out. He turned and looked for a moment, waiting for a shape to emerge, but he couldn’t see anything except the flashing digital display on the microwave at the far end of the hall.

He wiped her tears from his palm onto his shirt, reached for the knob and pulled slowly until he heard an audible click. His face was dry, but sore from the strain of trying. He tried to remember what it felt like to love her, but the encounter had been so practiced, so ruminantly rehearsed that he had processed the emotions long before he was supposed to feel them.

He said the words, went through the motions and let her emotions flow over him like a cold breeze. It wasn’t her fault that he’d gradually pushed her to the margins of his life, but fate conscripted him into a life she could never understand, something she couldn’t possibly relate to. It’s why he took night shifts, why he responded to her compromises with countermeasures, to keep the gulf between them as wide as possible until confrontation was unavoidable.

He hung on because she was the last shred of his humanity left, the last thing that kept him tethered to a world with a living future. He had to leave her behind, or he knew he would just drag her down with him. At least that’s the line he repeated every time he ignored her messages or conjured a phantom appointment.

His jacket was still damp, but the early morning air was warm, so he slung it over his left arm, trotted down a dozen concrete stairs and began his trek back to his apartment on 29th. The sun would be up soon, and Jack needed to shower and get a full day’s sleep before his next shift. He crossed 42nd street at 77th and strained his neck to take one last, long look at her front door before it slid out of view forever.

The setting fuchsia sun cut across the bedroom, forming a corrugated wall of glowing weightless dust that illuminated the bathroom mirror just enough to interrupt Jack’s late-stage slumber. Within minutes he’d thrown on his windbreaker, slung his single-strap bag over his shoulder, slid his phone into his pocket and swiped his coffee off the Keurig before stumbling his way down and out to the street below. His gray, late-model, rental-fleet-veteran compact was parked at the curb halfway up the block. In a single motion he tossed his bag onto the passenger side floor and sat down hard behind the wheel. The windows had been left open to let the day’s heat pull out some of the moisture from the previous night’s misty shift. Jack removed his phone from his pocket and placed it onto the dashboard mount. He tapped the app and a series of statistics faded in and out of the display while the UI waited for the crit list to sync properly.

Total Collections…

Collections per hour…

Somebody named Bobby Grimson had bagged “Most Collections in One Stop”: seven at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of Old UpTown. He didn’t have to strain his imagination to guess what that probably was. Jack easily fell within a standard deviation for every tracked category, which was the sweet spot if he wanted to be ignored by management. He’d heard about guys that let their stats fall off, but only because that’s the last anybody ever hears from them. 

His personalized crit list finally loaded, and it was exactly what he expected midway through a Friday commute – an extended trip down I59. He was already halfway there.

Jack made it to the scene of his first crit slowly, but with little resistance, as he was authorized to drive with emergency lights and use the shoulder to bypass inevitable backups. The condition of the vehicle surprised Jack, and he thought he’d seen everything. A red chevy Trailblazer was propped on the guardrail, upside-down and backwards, wheels still spinning. He pulled off the road as far as he could, left the car running, and stepped out.

He placed his bag on the hood and pulled a black fabric mask out of his pocket, stretching the straps around his ears and adjusting it with its hand to assure a proper fit. He lifted the hood of his jacket over his head and reached back into the car to remove his phone from the mount. Jack then unzipped the bag from which he pulled a small, ovular spring-snap case. He opened it and carefully lifted out a black glove. It was made of a very fine, reflective metallic material. He put it gingerly on his right hand, flexing to fill the snug fingertips. He began to stroll toward the wreck as another pair of emergency vehicles pulled up to the opposite end of the site.

The first responders and paramedics acted as if Jack wasn’t even there, but he knew they could see him coming. They ignored him because it was their job to.

Jacked stopped at the passenger window, bent to one knee, and tipped his head slightly so that he could manage a look at the crit still trapped in his vehicle. He was still upside down, suspended, wedged in place by a combination of steel, glass and dashboard. He was a twisted, quivering mess, sputtering and ghostly white. His blond hair was stained red, a thick crimson stream pooling on the ceiling below him. Jack made eye contact, but nobody was there to look back. Jack blinked and lifted his phone to confirm the man’s identity. As the notification sound pinged in affirmation, Jack was already sliding the phone into an inner jacket pocket and reaching toward the crit with his glove hand. He cupped it softly around the man’s carotid artery, counted down from ten, and then quickly retracted.  The shuddering stopped, and the muttering sputtered out.

Jack stood up and walked slowly back to his car. He removed and replaced his gear, then sat back down behind his wheel and clicked his phone back into its mount. He checked the box next to “Collected” on the crit’s profile, his entry disappearing to slide the next name to the top of the list. Jack pulled away from the shoulder and pulled up the directions to the next crit. As Jack sped away, the paramedics still desperately scrambling to revive an empty shell.

The waitress was bussing Jack’s plate as he wiped ketchup from the corner of his mouth and swiped from the payment processor app back to his crit list. It was almost midnight, which meant it was time to visit the residents of Riverview Terrace. Jack couldn’t forget one of Dr. Moore’s most saccharine assurances from his cloying recruitment schtick,

 “Jack, you’ll get to play a very special role in the lives of our most cherished citizens when you get to be the last, most reassuring face they’ll see before they’re whisked off to heaven to be reunited with their long-lost loved ones. You’ll get to share in their final words of wisdom, and be present when they say their final, heartfelt goodbyes. You’re lucky, Jack – few get these privileges.”

Jack couldn’t recall the last time he saw anything in a collection other than loneliness, pain and fear. Men don’t get to leave on their own terms, and places like Riverview Terrace were designed specifically to avoid heartfelt goodbyes. They are little more than depositories for the pre-dead, a purgatory for the living.

Jack parked in the middle of the dark, empty lot, gathered his gear, and walked toward the brightly lit entrance. The flat, beige-brick building had four stories and four wings, the main entrance a cylindrical segment nestled between two of the latter. He glancingly surveyed the building. The few units that weren’t totally dark were peppered by frequent flashes of blue light, comfort to those residents that cannot sleep without that familiar, rectangular-faced companion in the far upper corner of their sterile rooms.

He displayed a QR code to the lock panel on the front door, entered and nodded politely to the orderly at the front desk who failed to return a greeting because she was engrossed in her phone to stay conscious. The crit profile said that the collection would be in room 321.

After a quick elevator ride, Jack walked into a cramped room, one of the many illuminated by reruns. A man, alone, was still propped up in a chair watching muted canned laughter, hopelessly against his will. His jowly face appeared halfway melted off his skull, exposing the bright pink flesh of his lower eye sockets. He had no teeth and was unable to close his mouth, with large patches of yellow bubble-spittle collecting at its frowning corners. He was overdue for a shave and his hair was a series of crispy gray wisps, with two furry black caterpillars resting below his forehead. His hands were petrified talons and his clothing hung off his body as if a gust of wind had slapped it onto him in passing. His breathing was loud and labored, his skin glistening with a thin film of panicked perspiration as his body strained just to carry out the most basic functions of living.

Jack made the final confirmation of the man’s identity, knelt to his eye level, and reached out with his gloved hand to complete the collection.

SNAP! The man’s head jerked suddenly, and Jack was so startled that he nearly fell backwards, but he was able to keep balance by shifting his weight and bracing himself on a nearby end table. The man’s bloodshot, faded-blue eyes were boring straight into Jack’s skull. Though the expression on his face had been of stoic, static fright for decades, some small collection of muscles where his cheek met his upper lip managed enough sinewy spark to tighten and narrow, synchronous with the outside edge of his eye, all taken out of context with the rest of his expression might’ve led one to believe what he was rigorously attempting a smirk. Jack instinctively reacted by returning a smile. A wave of guilt seemed to catch up with Jack from somewhere just behind him, and he looked away, ashamed. He finished the extension of his arm and completed the collection. Jack rose and walked out of the room without looking back at the old man. He was gone now, anyway.

Jack couldn’t avoid getting drenched no matter how fast he ran back to his car, but having to zig through a sculpture garden, zag around a reflecting pool and fumble with the lock on a heavy wrought-iron gate assured that no amount of layering could save his dry skin from a thorough, cold soaking. The density of the downpour made even the quaintly lit Patriarch Hill dark enough to get lost in, but Jack had enough foresight to park under the only amber streetlight visible from the estate, which made his car look like a dry oasis in a dark, wet desert. Normally by now he’d be able to see the first hints of sunrise lifting the shapes of trees and buildings out of the dark abyss of the valley below, but the night lingered with the storm and kept day at bay.

Jack whipped open the door wide enough that he could slide in sideways and slammed it shut with just enough time to avoid crushing his ankle.  He paused to catch his breath after an exasperated exhale, reached over to wipe the moisture off of his phone on the back of the passenger seat, remounted it and refreshed his crit list. It was full (it was always full). He began the slow brake-riding drive down Patriarch Hill. He glanced at the crit at the top of the list. Looked like someplace on the 700 block of… 42nd street?

That number.

Her name.

That face, that brick façade, that dark hallway, all flashed before him under the fog-frosted glass canvas. His focus widened and his gaze turned inward. The images locked down into a loop and he couldn’t think, but he didn’t have to. His heavy foot sank into the accelerator as he squeezed the wheel with both hands, leaning forward until the windshield stretched completely across his visual field. He used every muscle he could muster to stretch open his dilated eyes, straining to follow the fragmented bursts of the fractured wet mirror of road racing toward him.

He sped faster, but the world moved slower. Every sign a century; every mile a millennium; every turn, an eternity. His heart was a ball of broken glass bursting in his chest, his face a twisted twitching mess.

He blinked, and then he breathed, and then he was there, standing atop the steps in front of the door of the row house on 42nd street. His arms dangled at his sides, phone in one hand and gear in the other. He did not remember grabbing the gear. He began to motion towards her lock with his phone, but stopped, and slid it into his pocket. The door had already unlocked for him. Jack pushed it open and peered under his dripping eyebrows into the darkness, hoping for her silhouette to emerge. The long hall remained dark.

Then he ran.

Down the hall, up the stairs and around the corner. He stopped himself at the threshold of her bedroom door frame. He took a wide, bracing stance as he hovered through the door in a careful, elliptical motion.

She was sprawled out on her belly, unconscious, on the far side of the bed. Her wheat blonde hair was evenly scattered across her pale face, next to which lay her hand, balancing a small cylindrical orange bottle between her palm and her ring finger. Jack seated himself on the near side, his side, of the bed. Jill always wanted him between her and the door, ostensibly to protect her if something dangerous comes preying in the middle of the night.

He touched her as if she were some delicate artifact, gently brushing her hair from her face. Her breath was shallow and distant. Jack looked down at his other hand – he was wearing the glove. He must’ve put it on instinctively, but he couldn’t recall when.

Then it hit him like a punch to the back of the head, and in a violent lurch he remembered why he was here. Overcome with rage and disgust he tore off the glove and swept her limp body into his lap. He pressed his face to her cheek and drenched her with the tears he withheld the night before. He pleaded with her for one more chance, but she wasn’t listening – she wasn’t there. Her body was a cold shell, begging him to say goodbye, to let her go. If he didn’t put the glove on, as long as he refused to collect her, he could hold onto her for as long as he wanted. He could carry her like this forever.

After a few moments, Jack opened his eyes and looked up just in time to see a hooded figure standing over him. The man knelt next to him and placed a consoling hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack looked the man in the eye and smiled.

Death of Sam

FROM JANUARY 24th, 2021…

Exhausted, Sam stopped and stared at the setting sun. Though slouching and small, even the most pitiable and pathetic men cast infinite shadows just before twilight. 

The long night is near, and soon there will be no light left to carry on. Sam hasn’t the strength nor the will left to make it to morning. Not this time. He’s let himself become so riddled with disease contracted through self-induced abuse and neglect that his own drug-enhanced immune system turned on him and began hungrily consuming the still functioning remnants of his organs. His feeble heart, now unable to supply adequate blood to his extremities, has left his emaciated limbs to act as mere props for their counterparts. 

Just for a moment, Sam’s frantic, deluded mind slowed and snapped to that last sliver of light arcing over the horizon. Finally able to hear above the scratching sinusoid oscillating within his skull, he listened to the silence. His nephews, distraught and despondent, began abandoning him hours before, wandering directionless in every direction. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been alone, but he knew they weren’t coming back.

As the last bright point of light pierced his raptured retinae, he could clearly see that this day, his day, was finally coming to an end. He had just enough strength to snatch his suddenly fluttering fear out of the air, swiftly pocket it, and begin carefully counting his belabored breath. 

Inhale. One. He tried to remember their faces, but he had made a point of not looking at them. Not ever, and certainly not directly. Exhale.

Inhale. Two. What remains? He sold his inheritance for pennies, spending it with an effeminate effervescence on ephemeral exuberance, the echoes of which rapidly evanesced. Exhale. 

Inhale. Three. He’d never considered tomorrow. He couldn’t picture himself there, or imagine anything other than today. Twilight. Exhale. Darkness.

The Sun will rise, but Sam will not see a new dawn. The next day will belong to a new man. Who, or what, will reign over tomorrow?

Try, cousin, to sleep. Though the night ahead will be long and cold, if you keep your fire burning and stay close to the light, we may rest tonight to wrest tomorrow. 

Whether you rise with the sun or toil beneath it, you must still make it to dawn.

It’ll be there, but will we?

Jen-In-Line

Pull and slide
Tie and strap
Tighten pads
Fasten cap.

Shade my eyes
Check the road
Stand and rise
Push off slow.

Press the left,
Heave on right,
Crouch, determined
I set my sight

Upon my way,
The way I go.
Avoid the crowd
To favor the flow.

Whir of friction
Beneath my feet,
Slide and cut,
Cross the street.

Taking flight
By twitch of limb,
Wrapped in space
Through air I swim.

Heart quickens.
Brow drips.
Breath thickens.
Flesh rips.

Here I am real,
Not in the past.
Made to feel,
Not made to last.

Dodge and crash
Through mud and rain.
Earn my scars.
Become my pain.

The breeze is warm
But my shell is damp.
Break into the open,
Coast off-ramp.

The world laid before me
Sky lit on fire,
I add my soul
To this heavenly pyre!

The torch is doused
in a sea of stars.
The dark rolls over
Near becomes far.

I slow to rest
But my spirit still flies.
I snatch my heart
And hold it inside.

Remove my gear.
Heap in a pile.
Close my eyes.
Breathe, and smile.

I offer my blood
In a prayer of sweat,
To imbibe my pain.
May the gods repent!

Surrender

From July, 2019…

Crawl out of my skin
Creep down the curb
Slide into the gutter
Sink out of the world

Grasp at my face
Clench my eyes
Crush my heart
Curse at the sky

Back into the shadows
Away from the light
Fall into the realm
Of perpetual night

On mud and rock
Wet and cold
Dripping echoes
Crouch and fold

Fool! You’re not alone
You cannot flee
You tried to hide
But they followed thee

They sneak up the walls
Stretch, reach my ear
They snarl and snivel
Spittle and sneer

They spit and sweat
And bleed and cry
It’s getting too deep
It’s getting too high

It flows down my throat
Backs into my sinus
Pours out my nostrils
As I drown in detritus

The pressure rises
Something gives way
Flushed out of the dark
Into the light of day

I retch and heave
Drip and dry
Rise from my knees
Squint at the sky

I lumber to return
To my abandoned flesh
I put it back on
But it has to stretch

They stalk me still
They’ll come for me forever
I’ll never be ready
I can only surrender

Island

From January, 2019…

The water is dark
I’m sinking fast
I do not think that my lungs can last.

I’ve been out here forever
Alone in the sea
When I fell off the boat
No man noticed me.

The boat kept going
As boats are want to do
Because the crew can’t afford to turn back for you.

Now the lead in my chest is weighing me down.
I cannot break the surface
I’m going to drown.

Emptiness above
Emptiness below
I have no choice
Down I go.

My fire’s gone cold
The light grows dim
Alone in the sea
I pray, on a whim.

Once more I look
I search the sky
Is anything there?
On watch, up high?

Then I spot, in the dark
A single bright star
It lights up the night
Like a fire from afar.

I take one last breath
I burst above the waves
With what’s left of my strength
I strain, focus my gaze.

The last thing I see upon that dark northern sky
Is that lone star silhouetting an island but nigh.

But then my arms went limp
And my eyes rolled back
My body stopped fighting
And the world turned black.

I awoke on a beach as the night was fading
Pulled myself to my feet though my body was aching

The island seemed small
But it’s forest was dense.
Spotting a path through the wood
I made my way hence.

A narrow path well tread
But at the edges, overgrown.
Lined with ancient trees and walls of crumbling stone.

I came upon a clearing off the path through the wood.
In the middle, by fire, a single man stood.

I approached and was struck.
Wait? How could this be?
This lonely old man bears resemblance to me

“Welcome, my son”
I said, “you’re not my father”
“I am the father of all of your fathers

“You found me on the brink of your imminent death
Conjured by you with your very last breath

“You sought, at the end, the last speck of light
Then you found it, now you’re here, you made it through the night.

“You’re not the first and you’re not the last
To fall off the boat and drift, offcast.

“Many drown
Most are devoured
Few wash ashore their penultimate hour
To seek the light
Walk the old road
Squelch desire for the conventional mode.

“As the warmth of my fire restores color to your face
Your time has come to leave this place.
Linger longer and you will burn
So to the sea you must return.”

He led me down and around through the rock
Stopped and pointed to a long narrow dock.

A small boat was moored there
Floating serenely
He then spun me around and addressed me keenly,

“It is time for you to return to the sea.
Know that once you’ve found the light
You can always find me

“This boat will take you where you need to go
But seek out others
Don’t float alone.

“At the end of your journey
When you’ve reached your beach
The story of my light in the dark you must teach

“So that they can find me,
Just like you
Repeat the cycle,
rescue, renew.”

Lost Sons of The Father

From August, 2016…

Lost Sons of the Father,
Why have you left?
My House is nearly empty.
It lies dark, cold, and unkempt.

You left all of your armor.
It collects dust on the wall.
Without it’s sturdy protection,
You cannot stand, and will fall.

The World, it has weapons
That you dare not dismiss.
If you refuse your defense
You’ll be forced to submit.

Your Hearth was deserted,
Flame withered to smolder.
The pantry was empty
A cold hunger took over.

So to you I wouldn’t listen,
Your warnings went unheeded.
Your frigid, barren, drafty House
Did not have what I’d needed.

I wandered then away
Through the fog in the night.
I’d lost the way to your House, Father,
As the space dimmed the light.

But the Glow of the Tower!
I can see from afar.
It cuts through the haze,
A replica star.

This Glow from the Tower
Leaks from every dark corner.
It pulses, surrounds me
Blankets me over.

The laws of your Fire,
This light does not obey.
The warmth your Fire gives me,
This takes it away.

The heat from your Hearth
is given up for the Glow.
But the cold doesn’t matter,
I just want the show.

Show me more! I demand,
There is always more to see.
The icy vacuum inside of me,
it shivers, quivers, needs

A warmth that isn’t here,
A fire I cannot find
In the Tower where I seek.
It’s in the House I left behind.

Now the house is abandoned,
A grimalkin guards the door.
She welcomes dark strangers
With a purr, not a roar.

Sons, my walls, they are crumbling,
The locks have all been broken.
The Fires are not lit,
It’s past time that we’d spoken.

The Steward has failed.
He’s muddied my word.
My commands have been mocked,
My lines have been blurred.

Too weak to stoke the Fires,
Too old to feed your soul.
I need new men to return
To reclaim this sacred role.

My House is in peril,
Sweat drips down my brow.
The hordes, they are coming
I can’t stop them now.

Please, come back and fight,
You must rescue your home,
Evil must be defeated,
And crushed down below.

Alone, I am, Father,
I’m now hollow and weak.
But now I’ve heard your voice
I know of what you speak.

Evil’s always covered
The earth in sin.
But it’s invaded our house.
And we let it in.

It crept into the Word,
Through the Word it was sown.
Replacing Fire above,
With Fire below

I must relearn your Word
To rekindle my Flame
I’ll crawl down from the Tower
And I’ll spread your good name.

It’s up to us now,
Lost Sons of the Father,
We must relight the Fire
And make it burn hotter.

Great evil is coming,
It will not cease.
You must take up arms,
There will be no peace.

I’ll summon an army,
We’ll flock to his banner,
Any attempt by the World
To interfere, won’t matter.

For our will is strong
And our cause is just.
Our Fires burn hot.
We will win. We must.

This is not the beginning,
This is not the end,
This is a war for your soul,
And the future, my friend.

Come, fight with me, brother!
Bring your sword, grab your shield.
We’ll meet demons in battle,
and face death on the field.

When we reclaim his House,
We’ll relight the Fire.
We’ll restore its old glory,
Divinely inspired.

Rise, Honor your Father
And the men who came before,
To the builders, the Martyrs,
The fighters, and the Lord.

Oh, Sons of the Father
Led astray by the Glow,
Come back to the Fire,
Return to your Home.

Weapon

From August, 2016…

The word lights the fire that forges the sword.
Your will is the hammer.
Your blood fills the mold.
Your life is a battle,
Outcome foretold.

It speaks through your eyes, it’s written in your blade.
Your fate relies on the weapon you’ve made.

If you find your soul lacking desire,
Take your weapon back to the fire.

Smite that old sword, throw it into the gorge.
Pull down the word and relight the forge.

When your molten soul cools and hardens once more,
Raise high your new blade and charge to the fore.

You will fall in battle
Your story will be heard
Your myth becomes legend
The legend is the word.

Spring

From Spring, 2011…

Why, when I need to find my center, do I wait for the rain? Where others relax under the glow of a warm summer’s day, I retreat to a slightly colder place. Finding happiness and warmth on a rainy day must…

What is it about the rain? Is it the gentle pounding of countless drops, relentlessly pounding a roof? The pitter-patter that will start as a few random, dispersed taps and slowly build in frequency and volume into a continuous reverberation, only to give way to a gentle pecking finally followed by silence.

That noise. The sound of rain on a roof; on the ground; in the trees; on a jacket; in a puddle; on the sea; on my head – in my head. The sound of rain when gentle is calming, when torrential it can feel ominous, having the potential to bring fear along with it – and panic close behind. When I let the sound of rain into my head, it forces out the racing thoughts and the frantic rush of ideas. Thinking thinking thinking, rain, slow, stop, thoughts reset. I close my eyes and relax; breathe.

Is it the gray skies, filled with rolling, bloated clouds that block out the heavy, hot weight of the sun? A cold, wet blanket to shield and recover from the hot, dry rays of the burning, blinding sun.


The sun forces its weight down upon my shoulders, like the hot breath of an angry God. I may enjoy the warmth at first contact, but continuous exposure to its heat begins a slow boil in my soul. Frustration, angst, hatred and violence bubble to the surface and consume my every thought, circulating through my brain and taking turns to torment me, until at last I must retreat to shelter in failure. Failure at a typical task left unfinished or a moment spoiled; failure of will.

The rain draws me. I yearn to be pelted by its drops. I enjoy having to squint to avoid pain and temporary blindness. I wake when it stings my face, and my chest tightens and relaxes as my soles slap through fresh puddles. I transfix on rushing rivers of rainwater that run along curbs and create hissing waterfalls when several converge on a debris-clogged street drain.

The rain ended early today. With expectations of a full day of rippling puddles and the sounds of cars forcing their way through wet streets, disappointment inevitably sinks in. Frustration begins to pull at the back of my neck as my day droops into malaise. Without consistency in the weather, a consistent mood is impossible to maintain.

Later…

Apparently the muse is sleeping today, although I sense an awakening of something, be it my muse or something else entirely – I suppose only time will tell. So is the writing of the first sentence and the continuing prose an example of irony, or is the author merely trying to force irony by writing it?

As the muse soundly sleeps on a somber spring day,
ideas bound in and out of my winter-weary mind,
mired in the mud of melting snow as the seasons slip into spring.

Oh, Muse, stay awhile. My mind has a special vacancy reserved for your ramblings. Perhaps you are put-off by my preference for my duties, no doubt?

The day is nearly done, and this is all that the muse could deliver? Disappointing, but I can excuse this exception by conjuring the soul of wit:

Brevity, my friend, is my charity.

…and Spring, 2019…

Rumble and clatter
Pitter-patter
Whip and pull
Flash and splatter

Drip drop
Ripple, run
Fill and fall
Rise and flood

Slow, quiet
Chirp and chatter
Break and beam
Steam and vapor

Proto-Prologue

From Spring, 2011…

He heard the explosions of the Imperial army’s artillery for the last time. He could feel the rumble of an entire armored brigade rolling down the hillside, slowly, confidently, through the once dense forest that had previously assured the fort’s residents that centuries worth of thick vegetation could stop iron and fire. Fools.

His body ached. He could feel the small pieces of shrapnel embedded in his left arm, each sliver an individual sun, burning his flesh from the inside, out. His head throbbed with so much force that he thought his brains were going to come bursting out of his temples. He kept his eyes closed tight to avoid even the dull daylight intensifying the relentless pounding. The pain was secondary; and his now adrenaline-reliant mind began focusing exclusively on survival. Laying on his stomach, he lifted his face out of the mud. Realizing it hadn’t rained in days, he was reminded that the saturated earth that he had collapsed and nearly drown in was a mixture of spilled fuel from a nearby overturned personnel truck and the blood of the unrecognizable dead man that lay but an arm’s length away. Lifting his body, now heavy with exhaustion, from the ground with his arms was a battle in itself. His right arm was burdened with most of the task to make up for the weakness in his injured left. The muscles in his back wretched and his calves burned, but he had to move. Face down in the muck was the last place he wanted to die, and his father would never forgive him for it.

As he lifted himself but inches from the ground, he could feel the heat of the battle above. The air was stifling. The smoke from the explosions burned his lungs. he could feel the exhaust fumes singeing his nostril hair, and he began to sweat instantly. He could feel the soft accumulation of warm ash falling onto his clean-shaven head as he slowly began bringing one knee up into his chest to begin the arduous process of standing. Before he had the chance to anchor himself, a hot, dry gust of wind caught him unprepared, flipped him, and dropped him face up, like a limp fish splashing into the mud. he clenched his fists and his jaw simultaneously, and then let out a long, weak and capitulating sigh. Could this be the end, he thought. An entire elite division of the imperial army is bearing down on me, and I can’t even get my sorry ass out of the mud.

He felt the energy drain from his body, and he opened his eyes.

The sky that had that morning been a crisp, cloudless blue was now a hazy, crimson red, scattered with columns of black and patches of wispy gray. He had to blink and squint to keep ash from getting into his eyes. As he stared into the endless expanse of the sky, his mind wandered, and he was soon standing on the lighthouse dock back home, gazing at first across the ocean, into what seemed like undiscovered adventure and endless possibilities. But his eyes always were eventually drawn back, pulled downwards, violently, into the murky waters of the bay. What lies at the bottom of the bay? Deep, dark, nothingness. Expansive nothingness. Death. The fears of men. Oceans are not treaded lightly, for mistakes or misfortunes on her sparkling surface will end grimly with you beneath it, as his father always said.

The shrieking screams of a woman sent him springing suddenly into a sitting position.