The Southern Fort

“Incoming!” Officer Tanner called.  “Ten o’clock to the southern wall!  Headed straight toward the gate!”

“How many?” First Officer Ellis shouted, vaulting over the rail dividing the stairs from the wall.  He landed near Tanner and peered where his officer pointed.

“Just one, sir.  He looks hurt.”

“Wilson!  This one’s yours!” Ellis ordered.  “We’ll get your feet wet with an easy one.  Move where you can get a good shot, then shoot to kill when you’re ready.”

“Yes, sir,” Roger answered.  He gripped his gun and trotted along the top of the wall, looking for a good angle.  The other soldiers grinned and patted his back as he passed them.  “Good hunting, Wilson,” some of them told him.  First kill was a big deal here in the south.

The incoming man staggered across the open swathe of desert in front of the Southern Fort.  He looked like he’d been running for days without stopping; his skin was grey with exhaustion, his clothing filthy and bedraggled, his eyes wild and desperate.  He struggled to put each foot before the other, tripping every other step and barely catching himself before pushing forward again.  He shivered despite the blazing heat; the injuries scratched out of his skin were all red and oozing.

He looked up and saw the Fort ahead.  Fear skittered across his face.  He stopped, looking at the soldiers on the wall warily.  But something caught his attention behind him.  He glanced back then staggered forward again, the desperation overpowering his fear.

“Please… please… please,” he was gasping.  “In the name of the Twin Lights, the gods of life and death, anything, please…”

Next to Roger, one of the soldiers spat.  “Fucking deists,” Reynolds muttered.  “Probably just trying to spread that religious crap through the confederacy, too.  Jackass.”

Fantasmic

We waited.  Around us lingered a bubble of calm amidst the bustle and bright lights that fight the advancing darkness.  We waited, for years it seemed like.  Years of waiting, for this, for other things too.  We waited in daylight and twilight and the dim, flickering light of a hellish limbo, wonderful and horrible and absurd.  But for this we waited in the night.  It was the only thing we could do.

Listen- there, did you hear?  A promise.  Soon, they said.  We won't have to wait much longer.

And then.  The bright lights go out.  The storm of color and water begins.

Music vibrates in my eardrums, pounding, repeating those words with sly insistence- imagine, they tell us, dream.  Seductive, they call us to believe that what we see is real.  Believe.  My instincts rebel and shout that it's a lie, can't I see?  But the music drowns them out, the familiar songs warped and changed but still themselves, still a part of me or what once was me.  Dream, they call, and we dream.

A boat- no, three, passing us by.  Their passengers both familiar and strange.  They sing us the music we know and don't know, weaving their songs with light and color on the still water.

Another boat amidst fans of water and light.  They fly here, fight here, jump here, standing on the edge with what others say was one time empty but here is filled with the little boy.  Woman.  Whichever serves the purpose.

The light, the music, the water.

Wait, something is wrong.  The man next to me laughs, his whole body in his laugh, and I jump.  Something has gone bad in the dream.  The music tells me this, something's wrong.

A woman.  On the island.  Familiar from long ago, though not beloved like others were.  No, not at all.  She calls to a reflection, her laugh echoes the man beside me.  High pitched and unnatural.  The darkness stains the colors purple and green, sickly and unearthly hues.  She screams and laughs and the water responds, spraying up at the sky in fans once again.  A fine mist drifts over us.

Another woman- why are they all women, the ones that poison little girls and seduce little boys.  Another woman, even more familiar and dramatic; she doesn't call the water for she is the water, water and light and darkness.  She calls on something more terrible, from the pit of darkness and bullied childhood, rising up like a mountain with those first chords of music.  I stand, tremble, because this is no strange, corrupted scene of amused fear.  This is the scene from childhood, the I-couldn't-look-away-or-else fear I remember.  The mountain, the terror, he brings with him his demons and toys with them, as the chords call forth the last, the dragon.  And this one is real.

She rises up out of a woman, the dragon screeching at the sky so much closer to her than to us.  She screeches again, and what once was water is now fire, spreading rapidly across the still surface.  Perversely we step forward, mesmerized by the hellish beauty.

Flash.

The dragon screams, but the sword of light has cut through her.

Flash.

The fires die down and she screams again.  She collapses into herself until there is nothing left, no fire nor dragon nor chords of demons.

The music begins again, calling on us with sparks of color and light and water.  We stare.  Believe, it calls.  Dream.

And then it's gone.

We blink, awaken.  The lights, the bright ones, the real ones, pop back to life.  We remember now.  It wasn't real.

Around us, the people who had paused continue on their way, the dream commented on and then, almost immediately, forgotten.

There Lived An Elephant

Once Upon A Time...

Nothing happened.

The End.

Wait, you want more?  Um...

Ok, so Once upon a time there lived an elephant.

And nothing happened.

The End.

Ugh, really?

Fine.

Once upon a blah blah blah, there was this elephant who lived in the faraway land of Australia-

What do you mean, there aren't any elephants in Australia?  That's where all the weird shit is, isn't it-  Well, how the hell would you know, smartass?

Fine, the elephant's from India.  Happy?

So.  This elephant.  In India.  He lived there.

And nothing happened.

The End.

That is too a real story.

You have got to be kidding me.

Ok.  Once, time, elephant, India.  So he's walking around, thinking elephanty-thoughts-

How the hell should I know?  He's an elephant, and I'm not psychic!

So he's walking, and he meets this mouse.  And even though elephants are supposed to be scared of mice, the two become great friends.

The End.

Because it's a long story and I don't feel like getting into it, that's why.

So the elephant meets the mouse and gets scared.  But then the mouse says-

Hey.  Do you want to tell the story?

That's what I thought.

-the mouse says, "Why are you so scared?  You're so big and I'm so small, what could I possibly do to you?  You could kill me in an instant!"  And the elephant says, "It's because you're so small that I'm scared.  You could sneak up and kill me, and I would never see it coming!"  So the mouse says, "Then why aren't you scared of other small creatures, like spiders or ants?"  At that, the elephant starts freaking out.  "WHAT?" the elephant squealed, like a scared little girl.  "There are smaller animals?  Oh my God, I'm in danger every second of every day!"  You see, the elephant has terrible eyesight, right, so the smallest thing he can see is a mouse.  So the elephant is freaking out, and the mouse is kinda in danger of being trampled.  The mouse rolls his eyes, but this particular mouse is ridiculously kind-hearted, so he says, "I'll tell you what.  How about I walk with you wherever you go, and look out for all the dangerous small animals that you can't see."  The elephant thinks about it, but then he finds the flaw.  "What about you?" he asks suspiciously.  "Won't you just sneak up on me as well?"  "Of course not!" the mouse says.  "I'm your friend, and friends don't do that kind of thing."  The elephant realizes the mouse is right, that he was being silly.  So he agrees, and the two walk off into the sunset as best friends forever.

And the next day, the elephant is found murdered by his so-called best friend.  Stabbed in the back, and the poor bastard never saw it coming.

Ha!  Just kidding.

No, really, it was a joke.

Really.

It was.

Would you stop crying already?

The elephant and the mouse walk off into the sunset as best friends forever.  And no one was murdered.  Never in the history of the world.  And they all lived happily ever after.

And nothing happened.

The End.

Hell no, I am not telling that story again.  Do you think I even remember how it went?

Smartass.

Here's the original version of the story, which I wrote/drew for the Art House Co-op Fiction Project.  I never finished the project, but I liked this piece: