Last week my wife and I celebrated a nine year journey together as a couple, eight of them under the marriage contract. I wish I had harrowing tales of misfortune and adversity, but it’s been a great ride. Yet, a creeping sickness ate away at our relationship Last year, I didn’t have much to give her since money was tight, but I gave her best give of all – my sobriety. In turn, it was the best gift I ever gave myself.

On April 23, 2012, I drank my last shot of alcohol, and have not taken a drop since. This change was spurred by horror and what Burroughs meant by “Naked Lunch” was highdef clear. I saw my reflection in the bottom of a bottle, and what stared back had the hollowed eyes of a corpse.

I am an alcoholic. There it is. You can put cocaine, pot or M&M’s in front of me and I won’t even take a nibble. Yet, alcohol was the kink in my moral chain mail.

I was not a fifth a day alkie who kept hidden bottles in toilet tanks or in false bottoms of desk drawers.  I was the most responsible drunk you’d ever met. After a DUI conviction, I never drove drunk. A DUI conviction should’ve been a sign, as if risking your safety and the safety of others isn’t a billboard stating “Stop Effing Drinking.” I never drank during business hours, but I have been known to close shop early. I never got behind on bills or hocked my granny’s engagement ring for a drink. I wasn’t that kind of drunk.

There is no “that kind of drunk.” I was a high-functioning, fiscally responsible drunk which made it okay, right? That’s the rub about addiction. It’s an excuse generating machine that produces quality excuses and defenses from its shop floor. An alkie can deflect blame like an octopus playing racquetball. I’m a writer and writers drink. We drink because we have a direct feed to the misery and glory that makes up life and sometimes you need to blur the edges just to take it all in.

And I was a fun drunk, wasn’t I? A complete Dean Martin. Once you go clean, your own mythos of your drinking binges are debunked and the truth is exposed. With the aggressiveness of a Texas School Board revising an American History textbook, I learned a different perspective. I’d say insensitive things to friends, who’d suffer it because they knew it was just the booze talking. I’d blather on about subjects of no interest to anyone but myself. I’d watch 80’s videos on Youtube, the same video, over and over again.

The night I had my “I am an alcoholic” revelation started like a typical weekend bout. It was a Saturday with that day’s chores and responsibilities complete, I was entitled to a four-finger shot of Woodford’s Reserve. I sat down in my daddy chair with my laptop and looked up old 80’s videos on YouTube. After the first glass was finished, I felt entitled to another. With each sip, all doubt and worry dissolved away. Good ole’ Problem Solvent. My wife quietly suffered my harangues on the merits of Duran Duran vs. Japan and went to bed. I sat there, making that brown line in the bottle sink further until there was none.

If there’s a Times Square sized sign that you’re an addict, it’s when you are mocking the old Charter commercials while cracking open a fresh bottle..

I’m just drinking to relax.

I forgot awwwlright.

I can quit anytime.

I thought about a relative who entered rehab a few months earlier. At least I’m not her, I thought, as I was opening the 2^nd bottle of life eraser. Like finding a stranger’s hair on my soap, the realization hit me. No, you’re just like her.

The Ghost of Christmas Inevitable came to visit, rattling bells made of empty beer cans. I saw myself in a few years, neck bloated like a frog, fat, alone, clutching my chest in a lonely apartment . This would be me, dead too soon, breaking the hearts of everyone that loved me for the last time. The vision would’ve froze my blood, but the alcohol would prevent that.

In a rush of panic, I took every bottle of liquor and beer and dumped it down the garbage disposal. I’m surprised the bottle racket didn’t wake my wife. It was heroic move to save myself, but now the addiction was fighting back. Why didn’t you just have one last party before quitting for real this time?

It was time to go to one of those Meetings I’ve heard about. One huge disappointment was when I called an alcoholic hotline and reached a messaging service. It’s like that Rodney Dangerfield joke about calling the suicide hotline and getting put on hold, but not funny. I’d thought 3am would be peak call hour since that’s when the bars closed. The woman took my name and number and said someone would call me later, maybe. The alcoholic hotlines are worse than the cable company, and that could’ve put me back on the sauce in a heartbeat.

I looked up a recovering alcoholic online chat. I had a few friends who had attended Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and it saved their lives. Yet, they have also complained about the cultish nature of some groups. You have to go to meetings for the rest of your life, talk about the same things that made you turn to drink. The chat group pushed me to go to a meeting, and I said I’d prefer personal counseling. They said I wasn’t ready to go sober and I must join them because I can’t go sober alone. I didn’t need to drop one bottle just to pick up a jug of cherry cyanide flavored Koolaid.

I told my wife the next day that I had quit alcohol and I found out I was about to be homeless. She told me that I was days away of getting thrown out. She had watched too many people she loved destroying themselves with drugs and alcohol. Was I really that bad? I wouldn’t have known, being drunk and all.

I would simply quit drinking. If I relapsed then I would go to meetings or into rehab. If I had been more hardcore, simple quitting would’ve been easier. I did some online research and learned that addictions start as a psychological dependency before it becomes a physical dependency, and that I had picked the perfect bail-out point. When you wake up with the shakes or go through delirium tremens, then that’s when alcohol is holding your body hostage.

Once I went sober, I found that every bit of John Cheese’s article was 100% correct. One day of elation, two days of sickness and sweating like a Disneyworld character performer in July. However, he never explained the “chicken broth pee”. For two days, my pee smelled like an opened can of chicken noodle soup. I suppose it was my liver filtering out all the gack in my system.

What’s helped me keep straight is I’m not surrounded by heavy drinkers and not going to drinking centered events. Some recovering alkies become preachy on the evils of alcohol, but I haven’t. Most people can stop at one drink, but I cannot. That’s not everyone else’s problem.

Once I went sober, I realized that the only real problem I had was drinking. Once insurmountable problems right-sized in front of me. I gained a big surge of confidence and I handle stress a sight better.  I faced off with my own darkness and it flinched, but this is a lifelong battle. Addiction has a can-do attitude and will try to find a way back into my life, but I will stay strong.

Here’s to year two through infinity.

Seriously, if you’re mocking rehab commercials while getting stoned, stop and get help.

Crick is in a pissier mood than usual. He’s muttering curses in that dead language, hunched over the wild rye stalks, his straw hat wide as his shoulders.

He stands and stretches his elderly back. My Fecking backe. He turns and marches through the man tramped furlough and I await his abuse. He moves quick for an old man, and he doesn’t let me forget it.

“A full basket,” he says. Showing me the ergot spurs. “A full day’s pay and what do you have, leezy basteerd?”

He pulls at the edge of my basket, dragging me close. My basket is half full, and I’ve been picking fast as I can. “Ha. I pay for full baskets.” He pushes his face into mine. His face is wrinkled like a cabbage leaf, smells of it too. “Fill that basket you worthless doonkeey. The temple pays by volume. With the Light festival upon them, they will expect a large quantity.”

He heads for the wagon, tramping down a new path into the rye. I shake off my brimming rage and set to picking. Coooksecker, I say, mocking one of his curses. I grab a rye stalk by the stem as if I want to strangle it and pick off three spurs, filling by basket nary a thimbleful.

I blame the row, it’s a bad row. Crick finds the good ones. He’s coming back and I hear the rye rustle behind me. He passes and drops a handful of spurs into my basket. “Missed these you blind eedeeot.”

When I’m nervous, I scratch my neck. “Don’t touch your face, mooron, even if you’re wearing gloves. The Priestess doesn’t let runts dance.”

I suffer it because he took me in and makes good possum stew. Also, unlike the Mother-fearing citizens of Slava, he’s never called me a red headed basteerd.

Night falls and the festival is tomorrow night. I push through the crowded rye, notice one stalk is different. Its spurs are white, not black. I reach for it and cup the bud in my hand and a greenish light casts on my palm. Crick comes to inspect my basket and he gasps.

“The Spur glows!” He touches the tip of the glowing spurs. He snaps off the bud and turns it sideways. “Bioloomeenescent foong-aye. It glows like foxfire.”

I see more of the glowing spurs. I pick them off but Crick stops my hand. “No. Go to the cart and get a new basket. We need to keep these separated.” I return with the basket and he dumps a handful of the glowing spurs into it.

“I am uncertain if has the same effects, but it’s rare. Glowing Dancing Spurs! If I can cultivate these, we’ll be rich.”

Neither I or Crick take dancing spurs. Her other children shoved us away from her teats. As spring and summer cusp, she gifts them the Dancing Spurs. Only the Temple is allowed to make the Dancing Tea. The usually sullen Mother-fearers dance as if set afire, have visions, take to all fours and mate like animals. We don’t join them. Runts never dance.

I pick fast, so fast Crick hasn’t cursed me. I have half a basket of glowing spurs and he stops me before I pick more. “Leave the rest so they’ll regrow next year.”

At morning, we head for Slava. The villagers are busy hanging lanterns, rolling brew barrels, and sweeping their doorsteps. When we pass by, they stop their chores and turn their backs to us, and then resume their toils in our wake. The temple is several rows of perfectly square columns, with ancient runes painted on them. Crick can read and understand them, but never tells the priestess. Parkeeng levul one. Lost tikkets pay fool daye raat, he mutters, then chuckles.

The Priestess stands in the middle of the temple next to a jagged slab of white rock, the altar. She turns her back to us, but says over her shoulder “Set the dancing spurs on the altar.”

Crick sets the basket down and the Priestess puts on a leather glove and inspects them. “These are white. Worthless”

“But they glow. Dancers will glow,” he says.

She pushes the basket aside. “Worthless. Give us our spurs.”

He sets the basket of regular spurs beside her. “Acceptable,” she says after inspecting them. “We will permit you entrance to the village four times a year and will gift you four bushels of wheat and ten bushels of potatoes at winter’s opening. Also, you may have one bowl of goulash when you leave.”

Last year it was five village visits. He doesn’t protest or negotiate. “The Mother is too generous. May I take my unworthy spurs?”

The Priestess nods, and Crick takes the spur basket and we leave the temple. “Arrogant eedeeots. Won’t even try them. “

We find the pot of goulash cooking over a fire – the goulash prepared to feed the festival workers. We ladle a heaping bowl of goulash into two bowls. We sit on the ground and wolf down the rich stew. As we finish, we prepare to return home, but I see Crick looking around furtively, and then drops some of the glowing spurs into the stew.

“I have to know what they do,” he says on our journey home.

The goulash gave me heartburn, so I walk outside to fetch water. Over hill I see a red hue where the village lay and I hear mad screaming. I wake Crick and show him. In a panic, he lights a torch and we go to the village.

We find the village on fire, and its residents dancing in the fire, not screaming in pain, but delight. Flesh falls from their bones like charred meat from a roasting flagon, but still they dance. Their smiles a skeleton’s grimace.

“They glow,” I say.

Crick’s mouth widens with horror, but he slaps me on the back of my head. “See, eedeeot. Why I tell you not to touch your face.”

Perhaps I’m suffering the dreaded Mid-Life Crisis and that in a few months I turn 44. While our life’s expectations must not be shackled to a calendar date, I confess that I’m only young at heart. In the coming years, the important parts start breaking down. The sand at the top of the hourglass is almost equal to what’s at the bottom. The natural youthful energy I once drew upon is just fumes. If I want energy, I have to exercise, eat well and rest. I’ve had thoughts about what will be inscribed on my tombstone or what hymn should be sung at my funeral.

I face the fact that unless some technological breakthrough like life extension or the Singularity arrives before my passing, that Death is setting my appointment in his Dayplanner.

I started writing in earnest in my late thirties, a time where most writers are either breaking out of the slush pile or hitting their peak. Yes, there are plenty of writers who broke in their 40’s, 50’s or decades higher. In all aspects, I was a late bloomer and my compass pointed to all points nowhere until thirty. Yet, I have two completed manuscripts making the rounds with agents and publishers like an uninvited drunk at a wedding.

In my own philosophical bent, depression is not a bad thing. Often it’s the zero-ing out of expectations. It’s where you acknowledge that all things are doomed to rot – life, love, glamor, money, fame. Like when Job cries out to God when all is lost, scudding along the bottom, admitting his helplessness. There is a point, where the voices of doubt and fear are silenced only by the vacuous uncertainty of life. I heard that vacuum last night.

I’m driving home from work. My job is not my career or ambition, but I’m paid well and treated with respect by my peers and management. When I’m feeling down, I reach for my go to comfort food – nachos. If I had a patronis, it would be nachos. It would be emblazoned on my family crest along with coffee and stack of half-read books.

I stop by the Taco Bell off of Little Roswell Road and take the back route home. This route snakes through residential area along the Chattahoochee River, and during the day it’s one of my favorite views. The road is shaded by old trees and there’s a few great views of the Chattahoochee.  A night, I can only see things bathed by streetlights or porchlights.

At the mid-point of this route there’s a tight curve which frightens me. The road banks a ravine with at least a thirty foot drop. One miscalculation, and down you go, caroming into trees until you splash into the river. Usually, I drive like a helicopter mom, but on this night, I felt daring. I sped up along this curve just to get my pulse going and see how close I get the wheels to the edge. I looked to my right and saw the drop and calculated how severe the damage would be. Let go of the wheel, a voice hissed from the vacuum. How it would all look like a tragic accident. No one would know, but me.

Chickenshit, I slowed down and resumed my travel. My middle name is Ray, not Danger. I got the rush I wanted and returned to sanity. I got home, fed the cats, ate my nachos and cleaned the house.

Yet, the advice from the vacuum, Let go of the Wheel, stuck with me. It was the tonic for my ailment. For years I’ve glared in jealously at the bylines of other writers. I’d be intimidated by their youth, their education and pedigree and wonder why I’m even attempting to put words on paper. Fear of inadequacy has a caused me to write for the cool kids or be cutting edge, and I’m ashamed. Insincerity is writers greatest sin. It’s time to become the writer I was meant to be, not what I’d like to be. I’m tearing off the wheel, and…

…I’m giving the wheel to you.

My eBook, Farting in Church, will now be 100% free, but donations are welcome. The essays represent an early stage in my writing, and I confess it doesn’t represent my best. It does represent the trajectory of where my ideas and themes are going. I’m casting it out to the world with no expectations. If it made you laugh, you’re welcome to donate via the link on my site or just let me know. I’d love to meet you.

Download Farting in Church from Smashwords.

I’ve written several stories set on Mars, and I will sign a notarized confession stating its’ because I want to write the next Martian Chronicles. They don’t involve plant-zombies, but in this story, we have met the Triffids, and the Triffids are us.

—

Subgenre: Zombie Apocalypse
Setting: A Martian greenhouse
Element: A Dream

The spines, the teeth and the nails of thousands of weedies scraped against the greenhouse’s Plexiglas walls. Yet In the peaceful confines of Laura’s garden, the mix of floral scents made her barely aware she was the last human alive.

She noticed a weed bud sprouting around the tarragon and basil row. She knelt down, dug two fingers around its base and pulled it loose. “How do these things get here?” she asked, to no one. She tossed the weed into a nearby bin and walked down the herb garden’s path. Ahead the flowers grew.

The flower plots were a sampling of Earth’s last land species, tended and crafted my humans, fragile as their vanity. Since her staff had ran or succumbed to the weedies, she was the sole tender of the greenhouse. Gardening was precise art and badgering her staff to do it her was always straining. The workload was burdensome, but at least she could do it her way without dithering fools cutting stems too short or overwatering plots.

In the corner of her eye, she could see the mass of weedies follow her like paparazzi, hurling themselves at the transparent walls. She noticed a dead leaf clinging to a cornflower stem. How have I missed this one?  At least there dead leaves clung like scabs to the stem. She took out her shears, snipped them free and dropped them into a canvas bag tied to her waist. She thrust her finger into the soil, measured its dampness and texture. “The fertilizer mix is all wrong.”

She continued her inspection of the flower rows, with her paparazzi following her. The path curved toward the right, close to the greenhouse walls.  As she inspected the daffodils, a sight shocked her. As her old assistant, Davis, pressed his rotting face against the pane, elongated nails and chitinous spines tearing though his blue coveralls, a daffodil petal was  fringed with brown. She cupped the flower in her hand, feeling the petals’ dry texture.

“It’s dying.” Another missed detail. She cursed herself. She could cut it down to the bulb; nurture it back to health with right compost/manure mix. She ran over to the compost bins, the weedie herd following her, and she threw open the lid of the largest one. Damp emptiness yawned back at her. She checked the others and they were also empty.

The compost bins were tied to the food and waste processors, and with her staff thinned down to one, they had processed nothing. Without organic compost, the soil would lose nutrients and the garden would brown, dry out and die. She crouched on the ground and few sobs hacked from her. The last pure thing crafted by humanity was housed around her, and it had little hope, just like homo sapiens.

Earth geneticists thought merging the human genome with plants would solve the food crisis. Homo Photosynthesis. If humans could photosynthesize food, all they would need is sunlight and water. The first generation survived, turning a shade of green and thrived. Six inch spines sprouted from their bodies, perhaps an evolutionary response to protect themselves, or to extract moisture from the air.

A new virus appeared, incubated in the plant-human hybrids and spread.  Homo Photosynthesis turned predatory and their spines served a new function, a means to suck blood and nutrients from the remaining pure humans. The Martian Government suspended travel to and from Earth, and for a few years this prevented the weedies from spreading. A year before, a ship of Earth survivors broke past the blockade, the weedie virus a stowaway.

Everything in my garden, she thought, the only true act of beauty humanity has ever done. They have to live, even for a while. Even as something else.

She rose and crossed the greenhouse to the atmospheric control room. Her greenhouse project was funded by the Martian government to modify Earth plant strains to thrive on terraformed Mars. Instead of genemods, she opted for an organic approach and cross bred samples that could acclimate to the soil. The government sent her notices that if she didn’t produce fast results, her funding would be cut. She shredded the notices and mixed it with the compost.

Her children weren’t quite ready, but few children are truly ready for the outside world. She took a deep breath, and fully engaged the Martian atmosphere program.

She left the control room, her paparazzi pressed against the glass. Within a week, once the atmosphere matches the barometric pressure of the outside, the greenhouse will open its vents, allowing the seeds to travel on the Planetia winds.

And so to bed. She retrieved a couple of things from the kitchen and the medical bay, and dragged a chair to a clearing in the middle of the greenhouse. She settled into the chair and uncorked the cold bottle of white wine made by a Marenis vineyard. She let cool relief drain down her throat and then took the syringe from her pocket. Her paparazzi, no longer thrashing against the panes, looked at her with dull, pupiless eyes.

She was falling asleep, a dream washing into her consciousness. Endless archers of cornflowers swayed in a field under a dun-red sky. Roses burst from the settlement’s ruins. Daffodils bright yellow against rouge soil. Peaceful, asking little of the Martian soil.

Recently, DC Comics has hired Orson Scott Card to write the first two issues of Superman: Man of Tomorrow. He’s better known as the author of the classic Ender’s Game, one of the must-reads of the sci-fi genre. However, his views of gay rights has overshadowed his contributions.

Let me fine tune it. He’s not a hetero guy uncomfortable around gays or let slip an insensitive remark. He believes, as an article of faith, gays are a threat to democracy and the gay rights movement is engineered by the Feminists and the Left to destroy the American family. He chairs the National Organization for Marriage.

When a favorite author has disgusting political views, some will reevaluate his merit. Critics hack away at the artist’s reputation and start backtracking on their glowing reviews. Fans muffle their praises around friends who’d take offence at their fandom. Like a Soviet Revolutionary who has fallen out of grace with the Party, the artist’s reputation is disassembled to where even mentioning his name might land you in the Gulag of disapproval.

Some comic fans want Card to be pinkslipped From since Superman is the champion of the oppressed and white, hetero guys don’t seem all that oppressed. Card’s views are repellent and irrational, but that shouldn’t discredit him as a writer nor should he be fired.  No one should be discriminated to their employer for their political beliefs no more that their race, sexual orientation or religion. Yet, given Cards reputation and Superman’s visage as the defender of the vulnerable, it was a bad hiring choice. Perhaps DC made the hiring decision since an Ender’s Game movie is nearing release and they wanted to capitalize on Card’s brand. Expect the Ender’s Game movie will meet with protest, especially since Harrison Ford is among the cast.

Ban DC, you say? Go ahead. How did Chic-fil-a fare after their anti-gay contributions were aired? People quickly forget the controversy and recall the quality. Some conservatives love some Pro-Environmental Chunky Monkey and some liberals like Coors with their locally grown, exploitation free arugula salad.

If fans are also quick to overlook the personal behavior of their artists. Have a look at the following video.

Shout “Charles Bukowski” in Atlanta’s Little Five Points and about ten hipsters will prostate themselves on the cobbles in worship. Yet, there he is abusing a woman during a taped interview. If this had been some shirtless low-income scumbag, everyone would be equal in their derision. Yet, this is one of America’s revered poets, author of Post Office, a man who’s inspired careers and unbearable coffeehouse poetry. Yet, if you read the YouTube comments, there’s a few who try to justify his behavior. She was a gold digger who was after his money. He was part savage, like any good poet. His generation had different views on women.

So does genius automatically redeem someone from their politics and behavior? If you want to lighten your bookshelf, have a look at the list of artists and their political views. See if they offend you based on your polarity.

Salvador Dali – Supported Spain’s Franco regime.

Bertolt Brecht – Supported Soviet intervention in the East German Uprising of 1953 and possible Stasi informant.

Jack London – A fervent revolutionary socialist and promoted the violent overthrow of the United States. His racism would make your racist in-laws blush.

Richard Wagner – The guy who put corpulent ladies in operas also was a fierce anti-Semite and was influenced by the forerunners of Nazism.

Commies. Nazis. Snitches. Homophobes.  Democrats. Republicans. Heroes to many. All our heroes are 1% gold leaf and 99% plaster, and we add the gold leaf. They’re hardly Superman.

A wind passes over the Vltatav, capturing the water’s evening chill, and carries itself uphill and sweeps across my back. I shiver, looking into Yitka’s eyes. She’s unaware and kisses me. I rake my fingers through her black hair, sun drenched strands flow downward.

The moment is endless and I’m falling into her.

“Please stop,” Professor Randall says. “Oh, got. You’re not going to publish that?” He rubs his temple, and squinches his face annoyance.

The story I’m reading, the one I was so proud of, embarrasses me like someone just opened the door one me while on the toilet. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Falling into her? Jesus. Sounds like Freshman Goth poetry. Did you type this on a manual typewriter? Because if you did, I’ll drop you from my class. Swear to God.”

I’m at a second rate state college and the office looks like it. A windowless white walled room with burnt orange carpeting.  Professor Randall shares it with Dr. Dencher, the women’s studies professor whom he can’t stand.  He’s middle aged, hair marbled with gray and brown.

I’m in an advanced Fiction Writing III course with five other students. When Randall approved me, I thought I had arrived among the elect. Randall had written a book in 1994 that was short listed for a Booker. I had never read it. Neither have the other five students.

“Ok. I’m being harsh. You start off with a nice sweeping opening. I like it. You establish setting, time place. You suggest you’re getting Biblical with girl with dark hair. Then you cop a line that you probably thought you were a gobsmacked genius for writing.”

I did. It’s true. When I wrote it, I was so amazed I almost hyperventilated or was hit with Stendalls syndrome. Yes. I wrote this. Pretentious assholes will use that line to woo clueless Freshman non declared major girls. And they’ll get laid.

“Now continue.” He says.

“I love you,” I whisper.

She turns her head and looks toward the bonfire. We’re partially hidden by the poplar tree’s shade. The others are signing a Czech campfire song, passing the Burčák. “I’m cold,” she says. “I want to sit by the fire.”

I pushed myself off of her and buttoned my shirt. She  sweeps the grass and leaves from her skirt and rises. One of her red stockings is down and she pulls it up. She buttons her black sweater and walks over to the fire.

I’m suspended with desire.

Prof. Randall pounds the desk. “No!”

Bile surges in my gut. “What did he do? Give me a concrete action. Show me how someone can be suspended with desire?”

I can’t speak and I don’t dare to. He wouldn’t buy anything I said.

“You’re allowed to use simple phrases like “falling in love” or “I desired her beyond measure”. He pushes himself from the desk, rolling back on the wheeled chair. “Have you fallen in love yet?”

I thought of Mika, my then girlfriend. “Of course. Many times?”

“Ah! There’s your problem. You’re about twenty, right?”

“Yes. Twenty-one.”

“Twenty one. Many times, you say. Let me tell you something. You only fall in love –once! Afterward, you’re just trying to recapture that feeling. Like the junkie trying the recapture that feeling of the first hit. “

I got it. An old man trying to dispense aged wisdom. Was he really the genius everyone said he was? He tells me I don’t know what love is? I love Mika. I’d do anything for her. She’s blonde, Ukranian. Every guy gunned for her and she chose me. I have wrapped her with my love.

“You,” he points his finger at me, elbow anchored on the table. “Have not fallen in love.”

“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I signed up for fiction class.” I regret what I said immediately. I just blew my recommendation to Colombia. I want to write. Not be like those post grad who end up teaching assistants in their thirties with one published short story in a journal only 400 people read – all professors.

He flicks his hand upward. “I’m just saying. When it happens the last thing you remember is your surroundings. “

“So, you’ve fallen in love?”

“Yes, three times.”

“But you said once?”

“But never the same way. The first was this girl from college. She dumped me. The second was my wife of ten years. The third was my son, when he was born.”

I fell in love with Mika when she sat in in the front row of my Contemporary Literature class. She was the most beautiful girl in the room.  I asked her out for coffee and she said yes. She’s said yes to everything since then.

He glanced at the wall clock. “Alright. I want a rewrite. Concrete images only. No fifty cent phrases like “I fell into the wells of her eyes.”

I put my story into its folder and left without saying anything. I go and meet Mika at the student center food court. I stop at the door and look at her, like I always do. Gorgeous among the green tables and yellow plastic chairs. I question myself. Do I love her?

Of course I do. She’s beautiful. She’s like no other girl I’ve ever met. I walk around the tables so I can come behind her, put my hands on her shoulders and surprise kiss her on her cheek. She doesn’t react, but she rarely does. I sit across from her.

“How was your classes,” I ask.

“Fine,” she says.

“You won’t believe the grilling I got today.”

She’s eating a salad, pierces a leaf with her plastic fork. The movement is so artless, common. I see her pretty face, munching away. She’s not listening. I touch her free hand and she’s motionless.

I try to fall into her, but I’m hitting the ground.

Last Friday’s Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge was to write a story in three haikus, and I’m not one to turn down a challenge.

The hearth dims and cools.
Nightfall prowls in on tiptoe.
The lantern quivers.

Claws scrape on the roof.
Dust falling from the rafters.
Growls shake us awake.

Rifle shots echo and ring.
A groan, a sliding and a thud.
Mom shelves the rifle.

While you’re there, check out the Wendig’s interview with Alex Hughes, author of the excellent thriller, Clean.

—

The Sherriff’s posse chased Frost as far as Lindsey’s hell, through the Fang Canyons and the into deepest chambers of Sinner’s Cave. The chase ended at the abandoned Miracle Strip Amusement Park.

Without thinking Frost ran inside the funhouse. Too tired to run, soul tapped of all will.

“Richard Frost, In the name of Nevada Sector Colonial Marshals, come out with your hands up,” Sheriff Blaze bellowed through the dormant barrel at the exit.

Frost ducked behind a curved mirror at the sound of the Sherriff’s voice. A layer of dust covered the concaved mirror. On the walls the dayglow images of contorted clowns were dulled by age. “I’d like to discuss terms of negotiations,” Frost yelled back.

“Negotiations?” Blaze’s nicotine tarred voice answered. “You killed two of my deputies. The only negotiations that will occur is between us and the caretaker.”

“I swear on my life. I shot the deputies in self-defense. They had been extorting homesteaders and dishonoring men’s wives and daughters.”

“There’s an old Earth song about that situation. Honestly, I don’t care a blessed damn if you’re innocent. I’m sick of this chase. Sick of you.”

Frost found a thin slit between the mirrors and viewed Sherriff Blaze. Deathly thin, build of rebar. Face darkened and wrinkled like a dry riverbed.

A band of frightening words shot through the barrel – Burn it down.

Fear bolted up Frost’s spine. He backed into the maze, bouncing from wall to wall, hoping for an exit. Through the thin walls, he heard a whoosh as something caught fire. He found the end of the maze to meet a  distorted room. Its angles all wrong, tall where it should be short and its perspectives either too wide or too near. He dashed for the odd jagged framed door and the room shifted to the right. He fell against the padded wall. He ran up the incline and the floor shifted left and he stumbled into the left wall. An odor snaked into his nostrils – smoke.

He crawled along the wall to the jagged door threw it open. A ten foot gangplank was suspended over a fake cliff. He walked toward the middle, but the gangplank dipped and swung wildly.

A mocking laughter barreled through the funhouse. “We found the power switch to this place,” Sherriff Blaze said. “You’re in for some fun.”

“Go to Hell, Sherriff,” Frost bellowed.

Frost dashed across the buckling gangplank and entered a room painted with wild flames. He faced the Devil. The plaster devil’s face was as tall as the room and in its mouth, a doorway. Eye’s yellow like a cats and white curved horns caked with dust, it cackled like a buzzard. Dust shook from its flames and red lights illuminated his face.

This is where I belong, Frost thought. He’d never been a good Christian, but he knew the righteous path was narrow and hedged with thornbush. No better than a raider, the Sherriff’s tin star was a blasphemy is the sight of God and Justice.

Hell. Nevada Colony.

The toil hardened settlers deserved better. Damned to a near barren world resistant to the seeds they planted, but through back breaking effort, people were fed.

Be damned if he was going to lie here and let the Sherriff bleed them dry.

He rose and stared the Devil in the face. On his right side, fire chewed through the wall and soon the walls would be true flames. He ran through the Devil’s mouth and into the spinning barrel at the exit.

The Sherriff, two deputies and a couple of off-world mercs stood at exit. “Finally came to reason,” the Sherriff growled. The posse chucked rifles and pistol hammers clicked.

He would die. Frost accepted the notion and was at peace. The Sherriff knew that his crimes would not go unchallenged. Soon others would stand up to him, like fronts of cold and heat, joining together to make a –

The ground rumbled and the posse jostled on their feet. A blood red cloud formed in the sky, issuing bolts of pink-white lightning. “Hellstorm!” bellowed one of the mercs. Among the banes Nevada hosted, the Hellstorms were the most despised, admired. The confluence of arctic cold, desert heat and equatorial volcanic gasses, they often occurred in the wastes. No one forgot when a Hellstorm landed on a settlement.

The Sherriff spat. “We finish this, then we run for cover.” The mercs fled as the ground under them darkened as the Hellstorm closed on them.

Frost laughed and stumbled through the spinning barrel, and stepped out of the funhouse. “Take me in Sherriff.” He outstretched his arms. “I surrender.”

A pink-white lightning bolt touched the ground behind the Sherriff, setting the two deputies ablaze.  Only the Sherriff and the Frost remained and the deputies flailed like drunken mummers. Lightning hit the old Ferris wheel, and it slowly spun like a fiery mandala.

The Sherriff leveled his gun at Frost’s head. “You self-righteous bastard. So we take a little extra in exchange for our protection. You think we’re the worst. Do you think you can protect them?”

“Look above you. Fire is raining from the sky. The day of judgment has come,” Frost said.

“Enough!”

The Sheriff’s finger closed around the trigger, and Frost closed his eyes. An explosion rocked the ground as a bolt hit the funhouse. The gun fired and a bullet caressed Frost’s cheek as charred wood rained on them. Seizing the opportunity, he kicked the Sheriff in the gut, and then elbowed him in the jaw. The Sherriff fell onto his back.

Frost grabbed the Sherriff’s star and tore it from his lapel. Frost and Blaze’s eyes met, enmity thick between them.

Frost escaped to the wastes, evading the Sherriff for the last time. He looked back at the burning Miracle Strip as the Hellstorm dredged onward.

At that moment, his chase had ended. At their next meeting, Frost would summon the wrath of the Hellstorm, and rain Judgment on the Sherriff.

This week’s Terrible Minds Flash Challenge was to chose a photo from this site, and then write a story inspired by it. The first one caught my eye. In American culture, you’re either going up or down, but the goal is go up. Like Buddhist incarnations, everyone strives for the next level, believing their ascension has been paid with their righteousness and hard work. We move up a grade, get promoted, drop the old model for the latest model. This why heaven is above us, Hell below us. The mailroom below, the executive bathroom above.

But what if Hell is neither above or below and either direction takes you nowhere?

–

“Today, I quit. I just shut down my computer, and walk out,” Taggart whispered to Lee, his cubicle mate. He glanced over the cubicle wall to make sure no management types skulked about.

Lee did the same, leaned over to Taggart. “It’s because the restroom, right?”

“That was the piano that broke the camel’s back. It’s like everything else here. Never gets fixed until it doesn’t matter.” Taggart logged out of his PC and stood. “Now I have to go to the 10^th floor to take a leak, again.”

Taggart waded through the cubicle farm, and moved through office exit. “Who am I kidding,” he thought to himself as he walked down the beige-tan hallway. “Quit and go where? Same job, same doldrums, different building.”

He passed the men’s restroom. A water stain seeped onto the carpet and a sign written in Sharpie stating “Out of Order” was taped to the restroom door.

Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he opened the stairwell door. The door hinges groaned, its lamentations bounced infinitely against the walls. Walls painted dull beige, like his office, his pants, his whole life.

Letting the door close itself, he trucked up the stairs. He reached the 10^th floor landing and was proud that he wasn’t out of breath and had beaten the door’s slam. He pulled the door’s handle and his shoulder jerked as it remained shut. He yanked two more times, but the door was locked shut.

“That figures,” His bladder was ready to burst through his gut. He ran up another flight and tried the 11^th floor door. It was locked as well.  “You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he said. The elevator was his best bet. He descended back to the 9^th floor, his floor, and found it locked.

He kicked the door and swore. “I’m locked in the stairs. Great.” He trotted down to the 8^th floor – locked, each pump of his legs jostling his bladder. Locked as well, he pounded on the door. “Hello?” The thick steel door absorbed the thudding. He pounded harder, and then beat the door with both of his fists. “Somebody, please, open the door!”

Someone had to hear him. Someone had to be in the hallway. His only choice was either try all the 25 doors on each of the building’s floors or descend to the lobby, eight floors down. The deal was, if it wouldn’t open, he would be entitled to pissing in the stairwell.

Down he went, letting gravity work for him. Reading off the numbers stenciled in red ink beside the doorway– 7-6-5-4-

It seemed the stairs went on forever, his exertions never ending and taking him nowhere. Finally, one last fight, and then relief. “Yes. Finally.” Careful, he pulled down the door lever which gave easily, a reassuring semicircular scratch in the paint where it had been turned hundreds of times. The latch gave and he pulled. His shoulder popped as the door stayed shut as if painted on the wall. “Nooooo!”

He beat on the door with both his fists. “Somebody, let me out!” His pleads echoed back at him like mocking children.

The door was next to the security guard station and the main lobby. Someone had to be there. Or maybe they were ignoring him, jabbering on Blackberries, too busy winning at life to help a loser who can’t find himself out of a stairwell.

“Hell with it.” He dashed to a corner under the stairwell. “I did my due diligence.”

He unzipped his fly, pulled out his member. If he gets in trouble, so be it. He had to grunt to get things going, but a warm stream issued onto the bare concrete. Relief swelled inside him to almost orgasmic heights. She sound of water descended to a trickle, then a few uneven drops. He looked at the puddle, the ammonia redolent scent crawling into his nostrils. “I had to. I’d get an infection or something.”

With unwashed hands, he tried the door again. Still shut and no one answered. He slid down the door and sat on the floor. After a brief rest, he believed the surest strategy was to go back to the eight floor, wait for the lunch rush and pound like hell on the door and hope one of his coworkers would hear.

The first three floors were easy, but his feet grew heavy with each step. He rested for a minute at the sixth floor, thirsty, tired and legs stiff as sandbags. “We’ll break camp here,” He joked. “And try for the summit in the morning.”

He ascended the last two floors and arrived at eight floor landing. “Made it.”  He closed his eyes, yanked the door lever and expected it to be locked. It gave easy and the door swung open revealing the hallway. “What, the…”

He stepped forward and glanced into the hallway and its familiar beige hues. The door slipped closed. He turned around and opened it again without any resistance. Hoping no one knew what he did in the hallway, he opened the office door. The rows of empty cubicles went on for infinity.

“Have I missed a meeting?” Not only were the cubicles empty, but every computer monitor was turned off. He found the path to his cubicle, or where it supposed to be. Its walls were bare of the pictures of his cat and his fiancé. The desk was clear of everything except a keyboard. Even Lee’s desk was clear. Every desk and cubicle was voided of people, belongings, life.

“Wrong floor,” he said. He walked back to the office door, but it wouldn’t open. He pulled again. “I need out.”

He pulled at the handle until he strained his arm muscles. “I need out.”

The door didn’t budge, and then the lights flickered out.