Playlist Project #3: Hellhounds On My Trail - John Hammond, Jr. (The Vanguard Years)
The XR-79 single passenger hi speed transport module was a rough ride when it came to atmospheric entry, but it got the job done. As far as Burt Holiday was concerned a rough ride through the Terran atmosphere was better than the rough ride he could expect on his first night back at the Martian penal colony if the trackers found him. So, it was with as much haste as he could muster that he punched the eject button the moment the module landed.
An explosive charge beneath his seat launched Holiday twenty feet into the air. Burt, aware of the stupidity of firing the ejection mechanism in full gravity, worked quickly to free himself from the seat and brace for landing. Luckily, hitting the ground running was one thing Burt Holiday was well trained at.
He wasn’t more than fifty yards from the landing site when he heard the roar of the landcycles that the trackers had dispatched for him. Burt had just made it to the tree line that surrounded the clearing, and he barely had time to get his bearings. Assuming Robert hadn’t moved anything, the cache was less than a mile in. Burt just had to choose the right starting point.
The when the cycles revved, it sounded like the gates of hell themselves opened up and Satan himself was screaming for Burt’s head. An apt description, Holiday thought, for anyone who’d ever met the warden at the Cydonia penetentiary. Burt ran.
He urged himself to keep moving, ignoring muscles that were slightly atrophied from three days of space flight. The sound of the trackers behind him drove him to push through briars and brambles without a thought to the millions of tiny cuts being left on his arms. The explosion of a shotgun somewhere behind him removed his normal instinct to exercise caution when jumping over what he hoped were just small trenches cut through the forest by wild earth movers.
Just ahead of him was a cache that included enough credit to buy a small asteroid, a pulse rifle that’d make light work of the trackers behind him, and a transport beacon that would teleport him to the cloaked satellite in geosynchronus orbit above this forest.
Burt Holiday was used to being chased. He just wanted to be chased in style.
Playlist Project #2: Hoochie Koochie Man – Muddy Waters
I was standing there when the gypsy woman told your mother all about you. It was a dark October night and we were coming home from Pastor Reynold’s weekly Bible study. The air was cool, but it was still close enough to summer’s end that we were glad to walk in the night in our short sleeves. Your mom, she was beautiful and her skin glowed in the moonlight. We’d just moved to St. Louis from New Orleans a month earlier and we were settling in just fine in our new house in a little neighborhood that had almost the same character – at least in appearance – to our old home.
As we discussed the passages the pastor assigned us to read over the next week, the old woman stepped from a doorway into our path, pointed at your mother, titled her head back and – God as my witness – cackled. We were unnerved by the display and attempted to step around her, but she grabbed us each by our shirts and held us in place with her gaze.
“You’re with child woman…” she said in a low raspy voice. The declaration surprised your mother. She’d only just found out that morning and hadn’t even told me yet.
“How did -” your mother began.
“The child will only bring you despair. He will be swooned over by women. He will be envied by men. He will bear the mark of evil and he will give you no rest.”
I pushed the old lady back and realized too late that I’d used to much force. She fell backwards into the gutter, but somehow never broke her stare. Your mother turned white with shock.
“That’s enough,” I yelled at her.
“You’ll see,” she laughed. “Your child will talk with devils. His soul will be as black as the night.”
We left her in the gutter and quickly walked along home, trying to calm each other down.
After the coffee had been poured and our nerved settled, your mother confirmed that she was pregnant and the lunatic woman must have been able to tell. We’d seen these hoodoo crones before, and decided we were more upset this time just because it was unexpected in our new city. We prayed together. We made love to celebrate the fact that we were finally going to have a child. We woke up the next day and went about our lives.
It wasn’t until that Sunday morning, the seventh day of July, when we thought again of the old lady. Your mother had gone into labor the night before and we rushed to the hospital as planned. After seven hours of labor, and a medical scare that required most of the on duty doctors to rush into the room to assist, you were born. A storm raged outside that made the morning as dark as midnight, and lightning flashed everywhere. Then, when you finally gave your first cry into the world, the storm subsided. The team of doctors didn’t think anything about it and just quipped that you must be our lucky charm. I saw the look in your mother’s eyes though. You don’t grow up where we did and not see the implications that come with the circumstances of your birth.
As you grew though, we tried our best to keep you right with God, but your pockets revealed a steady stream of talismans, mojo bags, and trinkets that showed how hard it would be to keep you away from the art. All we could do is pray. As we watched you grow into a man, we hoped that our praying would pay off.
Now, we hear stories though. That time in Texas when you were accused of cheating in a game of stud poker. We heard about how the other man pulled a gun on you and walked out without an argument. We also heard about how later that night he was found lying in the middle of his bedroom floor – apparently drowned without a drop of water anywhere to be seen. We hear stories like that all of the time. Word of you keeps floating back to us from whatever town or city you happen to be in that month. The stories break your mother’s heart. Watching her cry breaks mine.
I know you’re out there, and I know that nothing I say can change the course your on. I just want you to know that we love you and we’re praying for you everyday. Just remember son, every time you use a piece of mandrake root, or a lock of some poor soul’s hair for some dark scheme there’s a price to be paid, and that debt’s gonna be collected some day. The darkness has to be fed.
You’re freaking me out dude. You keep telling people about my house and they keep stopping by asking if I’m still your baby. It’s really getting annoying. I mean, every morning, I’m sitting in my underwear trying to wake up and face yet another day of corporate drudgery when some drugged out hippie or wannabe guitar player knocks on my door asking me if I can introduce you to them.
Why, Jimi? We didn’t really date. We had one night together. You were high. I was drunk. We didn’t even sleep together. Imagine my surprise when I’m listening to one of your records and I hear you talking about my little red house. At first it was flattering, but Jesus Christ man…maybe you could turn down the creepy factor just a little? The fact that you were still obsessing about me more than three months later just makes me worry more.
So, I’m letting you know now that there’s a restraining order against you. I had no choice after I heard you talking about how you had a key to my door. I’m really glad that I had the locks changed after I woke up and saw that my keys were missing. I thought I’d just lost them at the bar. When you sang about trying the key the other morning though, it was enough to make me borrow my father’s shotgun. If I catch you on my porch again, I’m going to give you both barrels. Again, I don’t want to, but you leave me no choice.
Anyway man…good luck with that whole music career thing. I don’t harbor any ill will towards you, really. I just want some peace and quiet.
Sincerely,
Mary
P.S. My sister Lucille is a tramp. It doesn’t surprise me that she’d run off with you at the drop of a hat. Tell her I said hi.
The hero lay on the ground, bloody and bruised almost beyond recognition. Above him stood the enemies who’d united against him. The vantage point was not one he was familiar with, or fond of. Even with hit vision blurred, their towering frames struck fear into his heart as he discovered that he was incapable of moving. He’d fought all of them before. He’d beaten them countless times. That they’d taken him down today was something that his brain was incapable of dealing with.
Yet here he was. There they stood.
He couldn’t make out the conversation they were having. Instead he focused on the taste of the blood in his mouth…his blood. How long had it been since he’d seen his own blood? Had he ever? This fight had always been so easy before, maybe that’s why he didn’t take the threat seriously this time. After all, who would have expected these wholely unremarkable villians to win. The failure stung, not because their plan had any genius to it, but because he was entirely responsible. He’d become distracted and hadn’t taken their threats seriously. He’d turned his head at the wrong moment and they’d taken the opportunity to strike. He fell to Earth. The world went black. He’d opened his eyes, and the searing pain engulfed his entire reality.
The pain from the burns on his legs was unbearable, but it at least told him that his legs were still there. As his enemies discussed and argued over his ultimate fate, he tried to concentrate on getting up.
He knew he had to bounce back. He knew that he could still win the fight if he could just get back on his feet. Having never been in this situation before though, he wasn’t sure he knew how.
Regarding: Psychological conditioning of front line troops
Dear Aslan,
Today the wife and I saw a documentary about your campaign to recapture the land of Narnia from foreign invaders. While I was impressed with the scenic vistas of your homeland and the deep rich beauty of the many diverse cultures, what captured my attention most was the apparent effectiveness of Narnian combat training and mental conditioning. Here in my world, my homeland has what is arguably the most powerful military on the planet. But even our most elite forces require extensive training to prepare them for the mental anxiety that comes with taking a life. Many of these people require significant psychological evaluation after combat to help them deal with certain actions. I was amazed by how four of your most elite warriors went from milktoast English Harry Potter wannabes to bloodthirsty killers in a matter of moments.
In the early stages of the documentary, these kids whined a lot about magic, and the pain of walking, and pretty much everything else you can think of. I admit that I couldn’t see how these kids could ever be of any use. But then, dear Aslan, the glory of Narnian combat training was revealed to me. In one crazed moment, the four children began stabbing, slicing, dismembering, and killing everything that stood between them and victory. These kids had a body count so high that the very heavens must have reeked with the smell of your enemies’ blood. Better yet, after each killing there was no downtime. No reflection was needed. They would just make a joke and then head out and kill again.
Where did you find such psychologically disturbed children?
They say his name was Joe, but who knew for certain. All we kids knew was that he walked the streets of South St. Louis with a two gallon milk jug. He was unkempt, unshaven, and unruly. Dressed in clothes that had never been near a dictionary that had the word clean in it, Joe kept vigil at intersections and in alleys – always alert to the possibility that his services would be needed.
Jeremy and I had been selling papers on the corner of Grand and Gravois all morning one Saturday. For $0.10 a paper, we stood in one of the city’s busiest intersections eating our profit’s worth of White Castle’s as we convinced drivers to lower their windows and fork over a buck for the early edition Sunday paper. Business had been good and the weather was brisk when Joe came up to our stand and asked if we had a dollar he could borrow.
“No,” replied Jeremy.
Joe shuffled from one foot to the other uncomfortably and looked at me.
“Sorry man,” I said. “We have to turn in our money when they pick us up tonight.” It was only a small lie.
“Right,” said Joe. “I understand.”
He raised the jug he held to his lips and drank some of the neon green rotgut he carried with him. As he swallowed, he grimaced slightly, shook his head, made a clicking noise with his tongue and walked on down the road. Jeremy and I laughed and joked about his lack of stabbing us.
Later as I recounted the adventure to my mom over a dinner of meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes, she told me all about Joe.
“What’s in his jug?” I asked her through a mouthful of food.
“Antifreeze, mostly.” she answered. “He needs it to keep his core temperature low.”
“His what?” I was confused by both what she had said and the presence of peas in my potatoes.
“That man’s served his country in a way that no one else can ever understand,” began my mom. She poured me a cup of Kool-Aid and held out her hand. Knowing the signal, I fished my day’s earnings out of my pocket and put in her outstretched palm. As she counted the money, she told me the legend of Jug Man Joe.
“Your grandma knew him when he was a young man. She said he was a banker or an accountant or something like that. He was just a normal guy back then.
“One day he was coming home from his office downtown. It was August according to your grandma, just a few months after your grandpa took off with his girlfriend. Joe was getting off of the Grand bus at Arsenal when he heard someone yelling in the middle of the street. There was a diner on that corner in those days and about ten people eating in the window saw the whole thing happen.
“The scream came from a man in a dark suit who stood there holding up traffic, gun drawn, but frozen in abject terror. Across the street from him stood another man, pale and tall with a full beard. The second man had a brief case and he was opening slowly towards the suited man.
“Joe, not knowing what was going on, but instinctively knowing that it wasn’t good, ran quickly to the suited man. He got to him just before the briefcase man opened the case all the way. Joe leaped at the last minute and pushed the suited man to the ground, but before he could get down himself, there was flash of light.
“The customers in the diner all told varying stories about what they saw, but the same basic elements held through each of their tellings. There was a pop and a scream. There was a flash. Everyone is certain that for a brief moment, Joe became translucent and they could clearly see the man’s skeleton.
“After everything cleared up, there in the middle of the street lay Joe and the suited man. The brief case man was nowhere to be seen.
“Later, Joe found himself in a government hospital and being asked by a four star general to sign a stack of papers. It turns out that the man with the briefcase was a Russian spy who’d stolen a top secret radioactive weapon. The suited man was a federal agent who’d been tracking him. Joe had saved the agent from death, but in the process had absorbed so much radiation himself that his body’s base temperature had been reset to some ridiculously high level. The government, in exchange for saving the agent’s life began pumping Joe full of experimental drugs meant to keep his temperature down.
“Joe never recovered from the trauma though and couldn’t handle keeping up with his scheduled medical visits. He began drinking and roaming the streets of St. Louis, watching for the Russians he knew were following him, seeking revenge for their thwarted plans.. Eventually, he’d fallen off of the government’s radar and ran out of the drug that was saving his life.
“Joe, desperate to stay cool, began drinking auto coolant. Most people would die from this, but Joe’s body ran so hot that he metabolized the coolant almost instantly. So the jug of antifreeze, usually spiked with vodka and orange juice, became his constant companion, because without it his brain would cook out of his skull. Still though, the heat’s enough to make him crazy.
“When you see him though…you remember that he’s a hero. The agent he saved knew the names and locations of over 100 Soviet agents who’d infiltrated government labs here in the U.S. If Joe hadn’t been there, who knows what language we’d be speaking today.”
I chewed the remains of my meatloaf as my mom finished her story. I was astounded by the tale and I viewed Joe with more respect when I saw him after that. Eventually, I stopped seeing him around and I’d lost my memory of him as I filled my head with information learned from school and life. One day though, the local newspaper, the same one Jeremy and I sold on that street corner so long ago, ran a story about a local homeless man of some fame who was found dead. The story didn’t mention anything of the man’s past or his fall from normalcy. But their description of him fit the image in my head perfectly. As I read about his death, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of whiskey and added a small drop of antifreeze to it in his honor. I thought about how he saved our country in one quick moment and in exchange for his heroism, he’d always be remembered as just another crazy homeless man.
The top is spun upon the table. It’s a beautiful thing, decorated by hands concerned with craftmanship and balance. Its spin is precise and captivating initially. It balances and glides on a needle point. It rides the edge of the table without ever falling off.
You watch the top spin. The colors and designs whirl together and hypnotize you. Even if there were something else to look at, why would you? Nothing else can match the beauty of what’s in front of you.
Later into its spin the top starts to teeter. Its balance gives way as a slow, slight, wobble effect quietly overcomes it. The top is now susceptible to gravity. You want to reach down and set it right, but for some reason, you feel it has to be allowed to follow it’s own course. You watch anxiously as gravity takes hold of this spinning curiosity.
Soon, the top is a dervish. Grace and precision are things long in its past. It careens and sputters across the table top. This time when it comes to the edge it nearly falls to the floor. You know it’s near the end of its cycle and there’s only one action left.
Still thinking about the beauty it possesses and the grace it started off with, you anxiously await its ultimate fall, so you can pick it up and set it back into motion again.
Essays, stories, flash fiction, and other meanderings of a man who believes that despite our differences in politics, religion, race, ethnicity, or whatever...we're all humans and we all have to work together if we're going to kill all of those damn zombies.
A proud member of the Grand Conspiracy and a South Side Samurai for life.
