textfiles/magazines/ONESHOTS/autolog1.txt

Autolog Number One, December 28, 1994
all stories guaranteed one hundred percent true



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Five Excerpts from the Mackenzie Diary

christian sykes


Today was my sixth killing. I was very sorry to see my father die but he
died honorably, with his socks on (tho little else). We have very good
blood, the Mackenzies, and certainly with good flavour, a hint of vintage
port. Our intestines are excellently made as well. "Just long enough to
reach the sphincter" my father used to blithely remark;  i've wrapped his
around the tree and put coloured lights within the thin membrane and the
children had to be made to eat the liver. I remember liver is what i hated
most in my earlier years. And my grandfather's liver was certainly very
tough and mother always overcooked everything ("We wouldnt want you
children catching nothing, now would we Harold?" And father who liked
everything raw enough to have a trickle of pink and blood dribbling from
his lips, just sucked sadly on his pipe and nodded.) To this day, i can
remember the minutes seeming like hours as i'm dressed in my sunday best,
a starched collar digging into my flesh and i can feel a flea on my leg
but there's no scratching at such a moment when yr pastor and yr mommie
and daddie and the mayor and everyone stand outside the church and watch
you gnaw away like some old cow on an old man's liver.  My children should
be happy we're on the road and no one's there but me and their mother and
i didnt even make them take off their pajamas for something more
dignified. Kids though, they're never grateful for what you've gone
through or how much easier things are for them. 




Number 12 today, here on the holy grounds of Stull. I and the children
stand atop the kansas hill, i've painted them and myself blue, mother
stands to the side holding our clothes. Before us the high priest
gesticulates over the disembowelled highway policeman writhing across the
ancient altar and i see venus, the most holy star, reflected in his
mirrored glasees. small trickles of entrails spill over the spirals carved
into the table rock stone, each spill brings forth a new 'ooooh' from the
priest who i'm quickly tiring of and who has eaten far more of his share
of the polish sausage which isnt easy to find in this god-forsaken
wasteland but the stars, once my father had fallen, the stars had to be
acted upon quickly. my youngest girl, she dreamed of him last night, the
dream which prompted the acquisition of the policeman.  "grandpa," (she
remarked in her eternally snotty whine) "was now a really big man but he
kept hunching over (like this, she'd say, and she'd start hopping like a
frog until her mom told her that if she kept that up sheÕd be stuck that
way and turn green and grow warts the size of texas) so he was like uh
superman cause he could do anything but he just couldnt do it to real
people so he'd make up people and then do it, and he was trying to come
back here to us, but he needed us help him get the door opened cause
c'rebus was barking real lots right in front of the door and granddad,
he's afraid of the noise cause he never liked dogs, not even ones with
three heads and six legs cause once when he was a little boy, they'd chase
him in his dreams and bite him so hard, heÕs wake up with little red pinch
marks all over his bottom." So, i knew dad was on his way. And here, i
didnt know how to open the damn door. And the RV is out of gas and i aint
even got hardly any money left. And the damn priest ate the last of the
sausage but maybe he's got the key to open everything. If he cant, dad's
gonna be real pissed when he finally gets out. 




None today, the kids are asleep in the RV, we're in little rock, standing
near the arkansas river in a small park under the old state house.
Margaret holds my hand, is startled slightly by the rising burnt moon. On
these days, i can almost see in her face the once and still beautiful girl
who married me, that night me and her alone in the Ozark night. She and i
pledged eternally and the angels, they took the form of sapients and made
a small bed for us under the pin oaks. Three days ago, we finally left
kansas, heading south after the storm. Boiling across the small hills of
eastern kansas, came the thunderhead black with smeared spirit flesh
sliding over Stull in a snarl and a pop and a roar howling with a thousand
disney demons, each riding an autumn leaf and heading towards the table
rock. The RV shook with the onslaught, the priest had slept with us for
the night and he awoke suddenly with a high-pitched whine. He woke us all,
dragging our sluggish limbs into night, to the altar, stood in the midst
of the carved spiral. I had barely tied the satin robe around my waist
when i staggered to the spiral as well. "Prepare! the door is open...he is
coming, they are coming.." And the bound blue bloated corpse of the
policeman stood up and he broke the ropes around his arms with a single
puff! and he took the priest by the hand and they danced a slow minuet in
the rising howl. My little girl, she started crying, hid her face in the
folds of my robes. But my son giggled with each exhalation of wind. He
swung around the dancing priest and the dead policeman and the policeman
stopped dancing long enough to take my boy into his flabby green arms but
never really missing the beat of their swirling waltz. Ping, ping, ping of
the rain started slow and quiet in the splat, splat, splat against the
rock older than water, earth, or even sound. My girl, she stopped crying
when the rain started to touch her. She knew each plop, ping, splat was
the footstep of her beloved grandpa and she knew he was coming for her,
never to leave again. And just as the sheets of rain had begun covering
the sight of each of us with grey cold universes, his tall shadow slid
down the slant of the old altar stone. Then came the feet, then the smile,
then rain sprouted bone and hair and skin and eyes and lips folded around
the smile and he said, "I'm here at last, the rest of us, well, they're on
the way." And he thanked and hugged the policeman and he thanked and
hugged the priest and then took the children by the hand and he went into
the RV. 



I'm still not sure what happened in Stull. I mean, the door opened like
the good lords meant for it, and dad, he came back. and the man we
sacrificed, he came back too, like he was meant to. All the people we kill
come back in one way or another. The universe is all about balance but you
should know that by now. But something's wrong, something i dont quite
understand. Bringing the dead back is a delicate thing, you cant do it
with just anything or anyone. We Macenzies have known since the earliest
familial record how to bring people back, each resurrection marked in the
family bible dating to the year the clan came to America. Every single
male Mackenzie who has fathered children has been slain, eaten, then
returned to the earth for a time until the right moment to fly into the
heavens.  When you bring the dead back, everytime you open the door,
everyone and i do mean everyone and everything that ever lived rushes out
in this mad rush and they look and dig for their corpse. Now, most bodies
have long decayed or are burnt, buried, drowned, eaten by wild dogs, and
so the presence of the returned spirit is unnoticed. Even with a mostly
intact corpse, the spirit rarely has enough energy for anything more than
lightly clenching fingers or fluttering eyelashes or small moans. And
before the life energy can rebuild, the demons sweep around, rounding the
strays back through the door and cerebrus leaps into the outside and eats
what the demons fail to recover. But now, my wife can see, i mean SEE, and
she tells me the air is full of those looking for what was once theirs and
the ground is soaked with the spirits and the demons are nowhere to be
seen. Stull was surrounded by demons at opening but apparently they've
forsaken the joys of the hunt for something more entertaining. 



We're at a KOA campground on the outskirts of Jacksonville, still in
Arkansas. Father is looking well. A thin white scar curves around his
stomach where the knife originally cut. His arthritis has completely gone
and he can outrun any of us. My girl asked him if he could fly and he only
grinned then they both vanished behind the RV until an hour later he
returned her slightly sunburned and he carrying seashells she had found. 
Father seems the same but he never eats. His flesh is only lukewarm, he
only breathes from old habits, his eyes are a steady unwavering unbliking
grey for he has no eyelids.  None of the dead have eyelids. He wont
mention to me what the other side holds though he tells my children
stories of rivers of cream soda and large peppermint birds with chocolate
blood and if you catch one, it gives you three wishes and lets you break
off a feather for an all-day sucker and if you're lost in the desert, the
bird will cut her own throat for your nourishment. But, he says, i loved
all of you too much to stay. All he ever mentions to me are large black
wings rising from balls of fury. He says "I cant"  when i push him
further. The policeman is still with us. He has regrown most vital organs
and lost his eyelids and is a wonderful cook and has therefore given my
wife a welcome rest and he wants to stay with us, apparently no hard
feelings about our brutal slaying because weÕve given him eternal life in
a (mostly) indestructible body.  Only five days have lapsed since the door
was opened and still no sign of the demons.  Not much noise from the
formerly dead either. My wife says the air is full of those which are lost
from seeking their old bodies and finding nothing but dust and there aint
much you can do with reanimated dust so they'll have to wait until someone
living summons them or if they can find someone living and weak who lets
them in. We had to exorcize my daughter earlier today from just such a
happening. We caught her leading a small group of boys in the campground,
the boys were goosestepping in a precise military line and she had a long,
sharpened stick in her small fingers and she was barking orders in a harsh
prussian accent. Turns out a German company of officers and men pulverized
in a shelling on the western front in 1918 found their way through the
open door. "But daddy, he just wanted to play, " she whined but we've
warned her about opening her soul to strangers so she's off to bed without
any supper. 






Interview with a Small Girl

christopher zuckerman


Don johnson watches over me. When i sleep in my trailer, he will come late
in the night, he takes the shape of an owl, he flies to my window, through
the window, he perches on the edge of my bed and then he waves his wings
and he waves his hands and heÕs on my bed and he sings to me. Sometimes, i
catch him standing in the woods with a video camera. He stands under the
birches and moon, moon smiles on him and moon woke me so i could see him
and don johnson stands there with a camera and the camera is pointing at
my window. 


One night he did that; he stood there just for hours with his camera and
he taped me sleeping; he never comes when iÕm awake, only when iÕm asleep.
i think heÕs like santa claus and so i stay good, so heÕll keep coming
back and he wont leave me again. iÕm good; dont listen to mommy. i wear
the white nightgown with the blue bows, the one he gave me.  i wear it so
i can see him and moon smiling back on my tummy.  Anyway, one night he did
that. He came with his camera and his men, his men were in black and they
were around the whole trailer park. He thought i was asleep and i couldnt
open my eyes cause then heÕd leave so iÕd just sit there and iÕd squint,
like this, squint so iÕd see the moon shine off his sunglasses and the
dancing red light on his camera. So iÕd just pretend and make a fake snore
and lay there in my white nightgown with the blue bows and then i heard
the front door open. Santa man was here but this time i wasnt just gonna
let him come in the room. I put on the bunnies, i ran out. No one there,
just mommy at the table. She got a gun on the table, real big and shiny
and silver in moonÕs light. She got a bottle and she crying, she crying
and i ask her where he go and she said who and i said daddy and she said
daddy aint worth shit and i said no he here, he outside, he the owls the
moon and he got the camera, and she said nonono, go back to sleep. 


My mawmaw, she know what what i mean. she see him too. but he say stuff to
her and she promise to him not to tell me but she tell me anyway. He has a
castle in colorado, he lives in a palace made of snow and ice and heÕs got
a thousand diamonds, heÕs got ten thousand rubies and heÕs got a million
billion dollars. Mawmaw, she say he loves everyone but he loves me most of
all. I dont remember my daddy. Mommy say he just up and left. Mommy say he
dont love her no more and he dont love me no more.  Mawmaw say he gonna
come back and get all of us. He take me to colorado where santa and the
abominable snowman live. He give me a diamond and a cat and a barbie.
Sometime, i bet he sit there with with a hundred tvÕs and theyÕre all
color too and he just watch me sleep. HeÕd take me back right now if Mommy
let him. Mommy hates him cause heÕs good. He gonna stop me from hurting
right now forever. 





Our Precious Memories of Childhood

jonathan magritte



When i was fourteen and alone with my cousin, the blonde brown-eyed one
who now lives happily with a paunchy husband, two kids, and wall-to-wall
shag carpeting, my cousin was twelve, a nicely unsteady sort of twelve. We
were alone in the green hills west of Little Rock, the respective sets of
parents were being mostly oblivious. She, she was a strange sort of
twelve, her head full of what passes for religious imagery amongst the
protestants and, of course, also full of a wonderful demonic glee about
life which didn't conflict with the fundamentalism; rather, it led her to
her own private mythologies in which vampires, ufos and the christ child
mix effortlessly in allied formations which save us from Satan and the
Communist hordes sweeping southward, led by Darth Vader himself. So, we
spent the day atop one small mountain, above the parents and the turkey
vultures whirled endlessly above us. On one rocky outcropping ten feet
away, a vulture would land frequently and then vanish into shadows,
reemerge and then fly beyond the line of hills; my cousin immediately
wanted a baby vulture for herself ("i'll hug him and kiss him and call him
'george'") and she concluded a nest must be hidden under, inside the
shadows of the bluff below. Of course, who was i to deny her? In the
typical pubescent haze, one would do anything for another occasional kiss
from lips covered in strawberry gloss and so I was suddenly posessed with
the mouldy spirit of Davy Crockett scrambling towards the Indian's secret
hideout. A small amount of stealth was required, leading me halfway down
the mountain, skin gently ripped after pushing through the thorns. Then,
slowly ascend the bluff in new sneakers pushing against misleading
footholds and stunted, twisted trees, and so i went and so i arrived. Atop
the bluff was a flat plane of white- splashed rock ending in a cave
shrouded in branches. I crawled along the rock, crouched at the entrance
when the shrill shrieking ten-foot wingspan flew directly into my eyes in
a hazy blur of brown striking from the cave. I ducked but not deeply
enough to prevent her yellowed vulture's claws from raking across my hands
flung over the back of my head.  Slipped, slid down the bluff, do anything
to avoid the enraged mother's silent return pass and i almost fell atop my
cousin who appeared from nowhere at the bluff's base. She laughed at me;
everything i wore was covered in dust and dirt and she gave me a mock
kiss, laughing 'are_U_ok?are_U_ok?', fell silent only when she noticed the
back of my right hand still bleeding and the spirit must have moved her
again because she took my hand in her own small palms and she pressed the
wound to her lips and she touched the blood with her tongue and then she
kissed me again lightly with the strawberry now mingled with the
now-familiar scarlet rusted flavour. Of course, such wonderfully fragile
moments always fade in first light and before i could breathe, she had
already broken away and was running down the hill to tell mother about the
great fearsome bird which, naturally, had increased greatly in the
telling. 







Tale of a Rat

victoria epstein



once again, i'm home, alone, tonight is cold, alone and i have seen the
falling star. If i could stretch my mouth, iÕd swallow the star and the
earth too, even if my esophogus would caress the sphere tightly and spew
everything out again. needless to tell you, even if you are of little
intelligence, i am filled with murder and rage. but never have i killed.
not even once. i look at people, especially women and i hate them.
Beautiful, lithe, small bouncing breasts and hand in hand with
square-jawed monsters full of muscle tissue tightly writhing beneath skins
of iron.  I despise them beyond reason, without reason. I am a logical
man, have been for years, am analytical to fault, always ignore the voices
in my head. They're nothing but a foul-mouthed chorus spouting useless
advice which, if taken, would kill me or leave me imprisoned and then,
where would they be without me? So, i do nothing. 


I can remember a day, a year, an age when the voices where silent and i
could walk under the light of the sun without fainting spells. I was a
mere child then, eighteen years of age, mostly free of the cancer, and i
was not yet in the city. There was a woman i loved with a careless,
senseless love. Her name iÕve never forgotten but why should i waste such
information on you. You'll just forget. All of eternity was at our feet
and, of course, ignored in the usual ceaseless embraces. Not a trace of
death, none of the shadow so pervasive these days. Once, one evening like
this one, i left my room to find her. I am not a man given to impulse. I
always sleep six hours during the day and take my breakfast at four, my
lunch at eight and an apple for dinner at Midnight. That cold evening, I
forsook my apple, put on my black greatcoat IÕve saved as my sole
souvenier from the war. Yes, I was in the war. You shouldnt be surprised
but I dont count my years on the front as murder so do not call me a
hypocrite again. I went outside in greatcoat, large black overshoes, and a
white scarf, handknitted from some god-forsaken island beyond the great
sea, and thus warmly attired for i take cold very easily, i entered the
city. 


On that black, cold evening, i was consumed with her memory. Everything
danced in my mind as flickering colourful tho misshapen shadows. For once,
my voices were silent. Where they lurked, I know not but tonight I would
not call them to help me or abuse me. I wanted true purity of thought. 


Then, as this evening, i found the falling star. You obviously wonder how
i could see any orbs in the heavens when we are so clouded with eternal
flourescence from the city and black smoke from the outskirts but must i
remind you of how perceptive my eyes are? Certainly far better than you,
my bespectacled friend. Then as now, i opened the door to the brownstone,
and there, just within OrionÕs belt a momentary flash barely sliced the
cornea. I smiled for i knew this was her omen. Once in my childhood days,
in the country, we had witnessed such an event, the selfsame night i
pledged my love to my sweet, my evervescent, my my my, well, she would do
the same and we wished the usual banal wish upon the meteorite hurtling,
hoping the firey trails wouldst forever insure our happiness, our one
flesh, etc, nauseum. She who would later call me a monster, surely she has
not forgotten her pledge to me. Such things, such wishes are never broken,
not easily. I know the law, the contracts say she is still mine! But i
shall place no lien. I free her from the law by my blindness. What is the
law to me now? 


This night was not for claims, only for observation, for my curiosity bred
by idleness and the whispers of the devil into my idle hands. Do not say
such hateful things to me again. I reject any suggestion of yours. I may
listen to the demonÕs words but i do not always act. My mind is still my
own and my voices only howl in their own empty futility. 


If your perjury is quite exhausted, i will continue. Her tenement lay
several miles distant in what was once the sewing district, a place where
my father once owned several factories before the war.  I do not believe
in coincidence. Our dearest most holy and fearsome Father has given unto
us a sacred purpose and He sometimes creates paths out of unlikely
conjuctions, sometimes to help us, sometimes in his peculiar humour,
sometimes to show us the true Author. She indeed dwelt in one of the many
grey collectives in the district; the Shiloh Collective founded in the
abandoned shell of my fatherÕs DenimWorks. I am sure you could imagine my
howl of glee when my detective told me of her residence in the original
source of my fatherÕs wealth, the place i would spend hours at his feet
during his frequent trips into the city. For when i heard the detectiveÕs
report, i knew the Lord was merely using the demons as a voicebox to test
me. I knew now the gnawing at my heart, these many years, was from His
teeth and my dreams were from Him. I could see my path laid clearly. 


Into the cold night with me, the purest, most holy night of all. I was
full of the fires from my youth, blown into raging storms from the
formerly faint embers of my great age. I held the papers from my detective
in my hands, my bare hands. I did avoid the gloves for fear my trembling
would scatter the papers from hands slippery from polished leather. I
would only trust the grip of my skin and my skin alone. Within the papers
was the address, the exact floor and room wherein she slept. There was
also a photograph but I refused to look. If i could not safely rely upon
the memory dancing on a thousand pins prickling in my head, then i would
have been faithless and such i never am. I am constrained by the law, even
if none else wouldst follow my example. 


Few were on the streets at such an hour. There was a small girl standing
on the corner, crying. Five large men ran past me yelling, turned the
corner with loud whoops and continued to howl in the distance.  Exactly
six times i had to step over people huddled asleep atop the subway exhaust
vents. But nothing would detain me. Not fear, not revulsion, not
compassion.  Any alteration would be a betrayal on my part.  I walked in
the shadows as much as possible, using the black greatcoat to cover me in
darkness and so i managed to escape being seen, speaking to any of the
rabble on the streets. I was fully invisible in my holiness. And, yes, i
took the subway. What taxi would stop on this night? 


On the C train, i carefully wiped my seat in the corner and sat alone.
Only a sleeping man, snoring in loud sudden snorts under ThursdayÕs copy
of the Herald Tribune could betray my presence but he chose wallowing in
his own petty darkness. I could smell him even though I sat as far as
possible. He was the odour of old meats and corpses newly drawn from the
water. A single gold ring glittered upon his mottled hand dangling into
the aisle, swaaying with the gentle jig of the train. No, i will not
revile him now. I will wait. I leave my train at the appropriate stop. I
will not tell you which one. You shall not trace me when i am done.  All
you must do is follow the list of my fatherÕs confessions to the Popular
Courts and find the transcripts of the deeds to his textile realm and then
match whatever drawing forms in your head. Suffice to say i may not have
been entirely honest but you will truly know what lies in my heart is not
entirely black. 


Here the platform is empty. I carefully climb down the service ladder
which was very rusty. I fear my precious greatcoat was streaked on the
descent but no matter. I walk along the tracks, paused twice in fifteen
minutes within alcoves to escape the onrushing death lights couched in low
droning hums of the trains. In this short fifteen minutes plus resting in
the second alcove for five, i readily confess my current weakness, i
reached proof of the flawless clarity of my memory. My father dealt in
many things other than textiles. From a basement under the DenimWorks, he
would supply the unlisted trains of 3 am with whatever his illicit
contracts demanded. From my fatherÕs sin i would derive the means to the
goal the Lord, the devil, and i pursued. Did i not say the Father
possesses a humour beyond all understanding? I think, on clear cold
evenings, i provide the third and final wheel within the balance of the
Lord and therefore i shall never die, even after the dust of your soul has
long blown away. 


I entered my fatherÕs hidden doors from the subway tunnel. I placed before
my eyes, a pair of infrared goggles in order to reverse all darkness into
light. I carefully cleaned each lens again before placing them upon my
head. I still held the papers in my tightly squeezed left hand. My right
hand searched the pockets of my greatcoat to insure the presence of the
bible and knife, unworn black gloves, and a camera of a quality fit only
for a tourist. Fortunately for all of us, I still held keys to all my
familyÕs ancient properties and fortunately still, the lock had never been
changed upon the hidden doors of the loading dock. 


A simple hollow darkness laid in foundations of my fatherÕs soulÕs dust
lay on the other side. Nothing was disturbed from the final grand years of
happiness for my father.  There were no motion detectors, none of the
guards usually vigilant within the collectives, nothing but the curiously
empty scrape my inadequate black shoes were making upon the rippled
concrete floor.  Perhaps the occupants of the collective had never even
discovered this basement, much less the secretive opening into the
subways. I climbed the stairway weak with rotting wood, each step a louder
creak but none was here to listen or worry about the sounds of my light,
immaculately clean frame. Indeed, no one had been here in many years for
at the top of the stairs was a solid wall. I confess, for one moment i
felt doubt. Perhaps my father, to conceal the fullest extent of his
misdeeds, had walled away the cellar. But my memory is ever flawless even
if such flawlessness is not quick. I remember father counting brick by
brick, row by row until finding the fifth brick on the fifth row. Tap five
times (father was a very superstitious man) then push slowly on the entire
wall and one enters an obscure hallway on the ground floor. So i did. And
my memory was vindicated. The wall slowly closed behind me, leaving no
seam or mark of having once been opened. Such workmanship you will not
find in this age, no matter how much you pride yourselves on being less
corrupt. 


I now was in a dimly lit hall. Raucous laughter echoed from a room at the
end of the hallway with mostly female voices. She will not be there. She
sleeps almost at the setting of the sun and will awaken early for prayers.
She is carved from habit almost as sturdily as i and from the same treeÕs
bark. I waste no more time on the interior of the collective but suffice
to say my memory and my detectiveÕs papers were full of the truth.  I
found my way further and higher without any impedence. The LordÕs hands
covered me from view and the whispers of the demons turned the heads of
any wandering guard. Upon the third floor, under the vaulted, cavernous
ceiling of the uppermost level of the former factory was a maze created by
partitions cannibalized from some ancient abandoned office. I think the
general purpose was to create a sense of privacy but the walls only
reached five feet in most places and were free of any sort of ceiling and
the cold air lingered even within the places with the low gurgles of
butane heaters. I enter the maze, turn left here, right there, and so on
for precisely eight times. I do not need glance at the papers now. The
path is scalded into my brain. Were i so inclined, i could even draw the
pattern for you now. I remove the black gloves from an inner pocket of my
greatcoat. With gloves upon my hands, i shall be even further soundless
and leave no traceable marks for my mind swims even without the voices to
guide me and i wish to later escape if the madness covers me. So my
rational thought prepares for the arrival of the pure beast. I know
whatever emerges shall be the will of the Lord and his demons.  Nothing is
mere chance. Nothing is mere sin. 


She slept alone. She slept in slow waves under her mottled skin with long
winding creases and channels forming black swirls deep into her face and
folds the skin loosely upon her arms. But some remnant of the face i once
knew still is there. Under the thin lips i know must lurk the crimson
youth, under the white frizzy cloud of hair must lie the golden ringlets
but my pitiful knife is too short to cut away the skin, fat, hair and
bones. I must be content. I knelt beside her bed. She slept low to the
ground on a thin futon and she bubbled pops of snores in order to distract
my reverie. I know her psyche delighted in such interruptions even in our
youth. She would even follow me into my dreams then and laughingly chase
the demons of thought away with a mere kiss upon their snouts or she would
furrow her brow and frighten them into colourful dissolution merely with a
hint of displeasure. 


Though the memory is painfully clear, i could not reconcile such with the
old woman sleeping before me. All i could remember was her lips forming
the words 'monster' on a clear day on the eve of the war. Then her face
then becomes the face which was before me, a face more like my mother's
than anything truly of the woman of memory.  But i could force tides of
anger into mere swells and i slowly, softly, lightly ran the leather clad
back of my left hand across her wrinkles. I followed a line from her eyes
to a strange small scar whitely flowing from the height of the right cheek
down unto the pale borders of her thinned lips. Then i touched her neck.
And the beast surged. And the voices suddenly awoke, unbidden, with
melodious giggles. And my right hand joined the left in encompassing her
throat, pressed harshly until i could feel the pulse of the veins beating
beneath my fingers. But I am always logical. I never take my eyes from the
face of the Lord and therefore i shall never sink below the waters of
Galilee. I released my hands from her neck. And then she awoke. 


I quickly clasped a hand across her face in time to stifle a cry. I
whispered my name.  She first stiffened even further then softened into a
derisive smile and pushed my hands away as she sat up. I report from the
most perfect memory the words. You have no grounds for doubting a recall
as complete as mine. 


"Somehow, somehow i always knew you would make some unwanted appearance
but such fears had quieted themselves in the silence of the intervening
years. Still, i'd think about you, wonder what became of you. i wonder
now, why now, why here?" 


"I merely had an idle curiosity. Such is now satisfied and I will now take
my leave of you" 


I stood and attempted a bow, which i admit was ridiculous and incongruous
with the surroundings but she seized my wrist and nearly snapped the
brittle bones with a sudden jerk and forced me to my knees again. 


"Sure, sure, sure. Idleness peeled my name, unlisted from the ten million
mass, idleness found a small cubicle in the enourmous collective, idleness
risked death at the hands of the guards which i could summon with a scream
such as..." 


Here she swelled her lungs with a deep gasp, i recoiled slightly and she
blew warm air into my eyes in the rolling laugh of an old woman. 


"And idleness brought you here with thoughts of squeezing life from bones
which will sleep soon enough on their own, and what idleness can summon
enough to remember the spring? you are still the mon-" 


I could not tolerate the word again.  I slapped her in a sudden roar of
the beast. I then wept when the beast faded as quickly as he roared and i
pulled her against my chest in a shivery embrace. 


"Please, you must not....How could you accuse me, me of all...I would
never forget the spring, the life which you were entirely within me. All
my years, my shade is supported upon his cross by the nails which you've
hammered yourself, my love. Without such promise, even though broken, I
long ago would have sunk into the earth and slept long before you. Please,
remember the law and your own soul's wrists which are bound upon the
tablets; our arms together bound before the law and within and
underneath." 


But she pulled herself away. Her face darkened until I could see only the
eyes glowing faintly in the bluish flames of the gurgling heater and all
was still save the roars of sleep from the surrounding maze. I stood. I
have spoken all which needed saying. I have given her all the words of the
Lord which are necessarily the same as mine. I perhaps have fulfilled the
calling of my path. I am, you will note, always a messenger, never an
instrument. 


I serve His will but what solace is the Lord unto me when i have done His
bidding?  When she stared into my face with levelled eyes coldly free of
any trace of forgiveness for either then or now, what could fill the
hollow ring of the Lord's voice saying "Well done, my good and faithful
servant", bellowing over the growing cacaphony? I fled her cubicle unable
to stand before her gaze. I refused to hear the word, any words from her
again. I half-expected to hear at any moment, the promised scream which
would ensure my swift ending. But none was ever given and i was able to
slip away from the factory in the same manner as my entry. 


And so my night ended. And i stood before my house under the slowly
brightening sky free from any black clouds, and all my doubts were gone
and i was again content. How could i have ever found lack in the bounty of
my Father? I am always a logical man and i always come to the correct
conclusions. Thus His will and my fitful wishes were satisfied, and i
carefully folded every article of clothing and cleared my pockets and
crept into my bed and i slept the sleep of the innocent, but there was
still no one to chase the demons of overthought from the halls of my
dreams.