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The Inklings

1. 

Everything about him was incidental. His six foot four height that seemed both casual vibe and imposing. (and the way it caused me to look not at his eyes but the top of his head, making him seem even taller) His shockingly dark gaze of a fire roasted chestnut depth that took on the after-dark tonality of ink black. His wild dreadlocked waist length mane that he often pulled together in a hemp-like weave, or net, or full-body seaweed surround, and its soapy but not unpleasant note when the winds blew. The winds were blowing when I met him. Blowing in off the strait with trademark Pacific freshness that cut across summer's heated intent. I was on a gentle grassy knoll in a charming seaside town named Sidney, its harbor and long wooden wharf a slice of heavenly view toward the gulf islands and distant Canadian mainland. There on an otherwise typical gorgeous August afternoon, enjoying my “grande” Pike Place blend with the lid off, a tall shadow stretched its presence into my zone of solar vitamins.

"Sweet guitar", his voice was deep and rich. I looked first not at him, but at the old well-loved and travelled Yamaha beside me on the grass. Then up. Way up from his sandalled toes, past the cargo pants and navy blue t-shirt, to his penetrating but openly friendly eyes. He squinted at my own squint, and dished up an instantly warming grin. "Do you play?" I asked. His answer was a wordless fluid bending of knees to where he sat cross-legged a couple of feet to my right. He nodded slowly and laid a large long-fingered left hand across the sun baking top of my trusty old acoustic guitar. With a long thumb nail he scratched lightly along the bottom E string until softly plucking a delightful harmonic at the fifth fret. It sang out into a precise breeze blended tandem voice as his hand raised and floated over the sound hole. I swear I could hear the harmonic note bending itself into a higher octave before it faded into the inaccessible aural dimensions that surely exist in perpetuity beyond our human capabilities. (imagine an entire universe sounding with the amassed notes of all music ever made)

I do realize that in the telling of this, I perhaps sound like a smitten female or a male of gay preference, but no... this was his outright exuding incidental charisma. He arrived at the end of a long encroaching grass shadow, on a perfect summertime afternoon, with his beautiful aura and instantly alluring presence. Arrived when I most needed it, for I had been considering suicide that very morning. That very morning when the hours from six to nine had brought in overcast conditions and the lingering (festering) wounds wrought by a love torn away.

In the compulsory interest of a quick backstory, suffice to say that a woman whom I had given my whole heart to decided to run off with a handsome architect from the Seattle area, who she had fallen for on Facebook. Such was the cold shock and abruptness of it all, I didn't even bother with the formality of grovelling. Me, mister financial underachiever with his creaking dreams of making it through song writing and landscape painting... yeah, right. (stoked to create, loathe to sell) Even though I totally lost my composure during our last face to face exchange and called her a word that begins with 'w' and rhymes with floor, I admitted deep in my heels that she had chosen well. And speaking of floor, I was.

It is hard to believe now, post love-disembowelling, that I was actually going to cash in my chips over her. "Ayte" was the divine intervention star. He sparkled so brightly and suddenly during daylight's most needed hours, even if it is true that I reclined on Sidney's grassy knoll and sipped from a happy feeling coffee. Contradictory? Sure. I put the dick in that word, some days. What a strange name, I remember thinking as he extended a down-angled right hand to shake mine own up-stretched. Ayte, pronounced like the numeral. "Yeah, I know" he offered laconically - "spelled ay why tee ee." Well in hindsight, of course. "Cool name" I told him. "Mine is just Fred." We then shook hands and I was struck by the coolness of his untanned skin. Despite those reddish brown dreadlocks and what looked to be a very aggressive five o'clock shadow of dense packed black, Ayte had the epidermal wraparound of an albino.

I mentioned down-angle and up-stretched a moment ago, regarding our first handshake of two that would bookend the relationship; it must be confessed that even sitting on the same incline beside each other, the disparity in our sizes was glaring. I am a very small man. The genomic fates had it in for me, or so it felt quite often, in bestowing a mere five feet and four inches of stature. North America seemed a land of giants as I grew up and suffered the ignoble pituitary gland gauntlet of high school... I bore an average face in a nondescript body that decided to stop growing somewhere around solar year sixteen. Bitter? You bet. The pimple-faced teenaged version of Fred carried around just as much carnal lust as the next kid, but his cards were all jokers. It wasn't so much that I was mercilessly teased or rejected in school, but that I shut myself down and stopped even daydreaming about finding a girlfriend. Sex? Losing my virginity occupied a shelf next to finding the ultimate truth about why we exist. I recall far too many barely contained screams at a world of towering classmates and gorgeous west coast women who may as well have occupied a visible but unobtainable dimension...

and I digress.

"How long have you been playing, Fred?" asked the casually striking new acquaintance beside me. I looked at his interesting profile (the nose so wide and flat at the nostrils) as he gazed out at scattered gulf islands in their glittering deep blue waterbed. "I just turned thirty five and have been playing since my fifteenth birthday." Ayte nodded as if he had already guessed the amount of years, and his ropy dreads splayed out behind an elongated rake-thin torso. "Dude..." he spoke the word in a way that had me thinking he had never uttered it before. "Why don't you play me something?"

I can't explain it, but normally I would have been ultra self-conscious and refused the request, especially from a stranger who had just blown me away with a single scraping plucked low-E harmonic. This being an afternoon following a dismal morning where I had seriously considered drowning myself into another cosmic dice roll, what did I have to lose? Face? Surely not. I am an accomplished guitarist, and dare I say a formidable songwriter who lives always a decade ahead of his curve? That zit-faced horny boy in a short man's future; he once upon a time found only one solace. In a Yamaha acoustic guitar with Dean Markley bronze-wound strings. My first and only true love. At Ayte's request, and then peering into his friendly inviting curious eyes, I thus responded with a half-smile half-sigh of "fuck it, why not?"

Of the many sorrowful sounding pieces that I had channelled from gods-know-where, there was this newest composition still brewing. It sat on the universal dial between heart trauma and acceptance; I had begun working on it during the aftermath of her decision to eviscerate me in favor of Seattle guy. (have I mentioned that he stands at a commanding six foot three inches?) This untitled nugget of woe notes found its root within one of my favorite tear-jerker chords, A minor. With a long stare out at the impossible blue of gulf sea, and me, I picked up the Yamaha and began to quietly play this unfinished work. The first two verse passages build from A minor. They are played without a pick and I gradually color the low A root note with tender arpeggios and saddened bends that climb up and around a crying out loud D, also minor. I could absolutely feel Ayte's rapt ear. Peripherally my eyes imparted that he wasn't watching as I played. I could still see him gazing out to the same horizon as mine. In my heart of hearts I knew this to be the finest composition I had ever started. Blood from a life not fulfilling had somehow trickled from my fingertips into the well-worn wood and four month old strings. I played with a fragile blue sensitivity for the tall lanky stranger, and didn't worry one moment about the missing middle eight bridge section that mirrored the man's first name. (astounding, comical universe, I would later muse)

He was silent for a good long moment after I ended the solo performance and sat cradling the guitar, like my baby, my lover, chin down in the graceful bend of its side. I heard him sniff, once and long, and realized with a muted shock that he had been moved to tears. Still not looking directly at him but across the water, I could see his hand come up to swipe at both eyes. "That was beyond beautiful" he started, "and so sad. I just can't believe you people continue to write such wonderful music in such a limited format."

I ignored the closing remark and glowed inwardly at his praise, until the curiosity of what he said got the better of me. "How do you mean, limited format?" I allowed myself a direct look and sure enough, tears still blurred out the deep brown of his eyeballs. Ayte stared first at me, then down into the Yamaha's weathered finish, and I added "and also what do you mean by you people?" He smiled then, a close-lipped one that for a fleeting moment caused him to appear monstrously unsymmetrical. "Do you have a car?" he asked casually. "Can you get to the ferry?"

I answered in the affirmative and Ayte regained his feet in one smooth motion, looking down at me with a sun halo backlight. (this is one freaky star child hippy, I remember thinking) "I don't know if you have plans for the evening, but I'd like to invite you to a sneak preview of my new band's material. I recently rented a place on Salt Spring Island and we rehearse there four nights a week. I could pick you up at the ferry terminal tonight, at seven?"

How was I to refuse? Rewind a few hours and I was on the cusp of pitching myself into the cold indifferent blue of lady Pacific's salt water. "It sounds like a cool idea" I answered, not hesitating even though my belly issued a warning. "I can drive myself to your place. I'll meet you at seven and you lead the way." Ayte smiled anew, nodded, then looked out at the clouds above the island where he lived. "We are deep in the wide open, at the base of a mountain near Vesuvius Bay. You're going to love it." With those words and my returned smile and nod, Ayte turned and then strolled away on his long thin legs. He headed toward the main street of charming Sidney, where blue-haired retirees white knuckle their way through potential fender benders every day of every week. I remember thinking of how abbreviated our first meeting was, yet of how I had thrown my shield away and offered up a raw new song and a willingness to try on something sudden and offered.

"Hey, Ayte!" I shouted to his retreating form. He stopped and did a one eighty, hands in his cargo short pockets. "What's your band's name, man?" The two word answer came across the distance between us in a way that intersected time itself, and I certainly experienced a devastating deja-vu upon hearing it : "The Inklings". I would have further shouted a positive response, had not the hint of I-know-this-already smacked me in the face. Ayte turned back to his exit trajectory. I looked at my watch, then out at the fluffy white cloud bank above Salt Spring Island and gulf environs. A beautiful glowing gossamer, almost sparkly from within, casting down cotton candy reflections in the waters of a paradise for those who truly see. I had five hours to kill, but at least I wasn't killing myself.

It was another half hour before I picked myself up off the grass, in much improved if not almost ecstatic spirits. Strange. I felt turned on in a parallel but different way to the sexually aroused feeling. Ayte was such an odd dude. His soapy hair fragrance and indecipherable Jesus-ian vibe lingered around me for hours, and I kept repeat hearing that incredible incredulous thumb nail harmonic note... he had those Hendrix thumbs that could wrap around a neck to phrase bass passages to underpin rhythm patterns. I recognized my newfound verve as a sheer pulsating excitement over the prospect of hearing the guy play guitar. If he could do what I suspected he could, what would his band sound like?

"Cool name" I proclaimed over the air rushing through my beater of a Toyota as I left Sidney by the sea and made my way to the tiny one bedroom apartment that I loosely called home. I lived on the outskirts of Saanich, not far from Bear Lake and many other paradisiacal locales that had shaped my adult years but not saved me from the cruel talons of heartbreak. "The Inklings" I said aloud, chuckling. Then I dovetailed, or downward spiralled, into a reverie about what Cynthia would have made of mister six foot four Ayte. He was instantly impact-full. He was casually but boomingly charismatic in a way that bisected sexiness and an exotic heady strangeness. Yeah, I thought, punching down harder on the gas pedal, Cynthia would have wanted to fuck him. She was entirely wired for response to those of a highly interesting aura, be that response a keen wish to know more that bypassed womanly feelings, or that which was easiest for me to believe lately; that she wanted to branch out and truly taste-test the waters of depth within potential lovers and great loves. I wasn't the guy. One wild year and one completely offered heart, mine, had not earned her unwavering interest and devotion.

I had suspected early on that Cynthia didn't have a lot of respect for my lack of "drive" to participate in the grand charade of society. I had always drifted from job to job, mostly part time, and my heart had belonged to music making and painting, if not the unsavory chasm that I could not cross : subsisting through the selling of my art. It was a thing that I didn't disapprove of for others, of course, but personally I found it reprehensible and limiting to anything further that might issue forth through my humble channel. Silly? Hell yes. Thirty five years, dwindling funds from my inheritance, and the loss of that one woman who had liked me enough to say she loved me... f-bomb f-bomb ad infinitum. It took ten kilometres and some mental doing, but I eventually shrugged out of the momentary funkification and regained that golden anticipatory shine that Ayte's energy had lit within me.

I looked at my watch before pulling up to park in front of the squat 1940 apartment building that housed me and my trusty Yamaha : I had four hours to kill, but at least I wasn't killing myself.

2.

Hindsight and retrospect being strange twins, it is true that I probably could have done without the fat west coast bud that helped me through my remaining hours in wait. Clearly I was jacked up over hearing Ayte and his bandmates. I sat at home with my ass meat deeply planted into the sagging sofa cushion, breathed back mama nature balm-smoke, and considered whether or not to bring my acoustic guitar along. It was always with me. Had I decided to leave it behind, it would have taken the breaking of my entire pattern because it was always in its gig bag and laying across the back seat of my ride. I'd been a semi-regular on Salt Spring island, anyhow, and it is a zone for the earth children to kick back and shamelessly exult. Wiccans, pagans, outright stoners, a whole lot of artists and "green" this and that types... certainly a holy land of acoustic guitars, folk music, and interaction via jamming. It was a no-brainer to bring my trusty Yamaha with me, and I luxuriated on the sinking sofa with a no-brain sensation, nodding to some vague incoming music signal idea. I still needed to write a bridge for my newest, saddest, most "felt" beautiful piece. Maybe The Inklings would inspire it?

The time arrived leisurely. Those butterfly wing knots went away only to be replaced by that stereotypical post-smoke hunger, and I wolfed my way through the remainder of a large tub of store bought potato salad, with a tall glass of carbonated spring water. During the drive up to the ferry terminal I listened to my most recent recordings, silently pleased and paradoxically pissed at a world that settles for so little when it comes to popular music. The sweet with the bitter, bitches. How to know sweetness without so much suck? It took the usual amount of time, and minor headache, to pay for the ferry and get the Toyota positioned on deck. It was a typical glorious early evening as I crossed the depthless looking blue waters, a touch choppy from rising and cooling winds. Rather than sit in the car I stood on the bow of the ferry, peering out at the approach of Salt Spring, looking for the first visual of mister Ayte. I had no idea what he would be driving, but imagined him as either a panel van or a motorcycle guy.

Neither. It was impossible to miss him at the Vesuvius Bay ferry terminal, leaning against a shiny black Buick LeSabre from the era when cars had leg and headroom, tank-like skeletons and serious gas thirst. Of course a big dude like that is going to have a big dude's ride, right? He spotted me immediately and waved a casual hand as the winds tossed his hair ropes around. I could see a smile, and it warmed away my stomach's returning doubt chills. Into the Toyota, out onto the parking area at the terminal, and we greeted each other with smiles. "Wicked cool that you could make it, Fred" he was extra tall by then, wearing a thick heeled pair of hiking boots and faded knee-torn jeans, and the de rigueur fleece over-shirt required by oceana Pacifica. I felt like a midget next to him, but his manner was warm and off-hand in a way that relaxed me. This was no alpha male playing jerk, and besides, he was just weird enough looking to straddle the ineffable border between sex god and outright geek. I liked that about Ayte, truth be told.

"There is one item of potential weirdness that I must mention right away" he said matter-of-factly, causing the gut knots to tighten a little. "I think it's best if you leave your car here and I drive you to my place, okay?" I started to protest and he continued - "The others weren't too keen on my inviting you over without asking them first, but it's my space and I have final say... it's just that, there's one other thing; when we get out on Upper Ganges road I need to blindfold you - "

"Say, what?"

"Dude" (the word issued forth with more ease than his earlier use) "It's for your own good, man. Let's just say I have a little indoor farming operation going on there, and it doesn't make much sense for us to have you know where the place is or how to get there." I rolled that over for a few moments, feeling stung small and stupid at first but admitting the logic. His eyes seemed genuinely sorry. "I don't drink either, bro" he went on. "You'll get back here no problem for the last ferry, or you can even crash overnight. We have lots of space." Here's the thing; ever since Cynthia fucked me and then fucked me over for mister Seattle, I'd been as tightly wound as it gets. Drinking, smoking way too much herbals, and frittering away inheritance money that was marked by the extra weight of tragedy. My parents had both perished in a float plane accident up-island, only two years prior to my meeting... her. The only sibling, elder sister Patty who disapproved of basically everything Fred, received the house and its five acres in the heart of Sooke. Me, a fifty thousand dollar cushion that would soon resemble one of the ones on my heater-burned sofa. Ayte looked down at me in Fred's little turmoil, and then I mellowed out and accepted his terms. "You rock, bro" he told me in his quick intimacy manner. "When we get a few miles up the road, I'll pull over and have you sit in back, and you can wear this..." he yanked a dark blue bandana from his back pocket, already prepared for my agreeing. It was decorated with dozens of tiny Stropharia Cubensis mushrooms, indigenous to the region and gateways of allure that I had previously attempted and failed at. (stomach ache city, too)

"I meant to mention earlier" Ayte beamed, and I knew what was coming - "did you bring your guitar along?" I told him it was always with me, and he smacked me on the shoulder gleefully. "Grab it and let's go. You are going to have your mind fully blown open, and I already told the bandmates about your beautiful song." I beamed a beam of my own and we were moments later underway. I had forgotten just how roomy the old Buicks could be, and with a comparative giant beside me I felt smaller than ever. We pulled out into the relatively quiet traffic flow and hadn't travelled a hundred yards before Ayte said - "So, she was worth it, no doubt." I didn't understand him at all, and asked what he meant. "Your song. Your beautiful new piece of music that you played. Whoever inspired that in you was definitely worth whatever the cost was... right?"

"How did you know that was a new song, though?" I asked him, replaying our earlier meeting and reasonably sure I hadn't told him. Ayte laughed and squinted at me with an appraising almost annoying glint in his eyes. "Fred... it was filled with that new song vibe... a lot of raw heart, and it still needed a middle section unless you're a verse chorus only kind of writer." I began to formulate an answer that just might make mention of the departed Cynthia and the blast crater where my heart had been, but Ayte continued - "It would be really cool if you wrote in a major chord, positive sounding bridge, as if you were regaining strength and optimism, and then had it drop right back down into that deep sad final third."

My only response arrived in time with a sinking feeling in my chest that was momentary but punishing. "Her name is Cynthia" I admitted, looking out the side window at passing countryside and a rising slope jammed with Spruce trees. "I guess you could say she was my first and only love, but she dumped me for someone else not long ago." Ayte nodded gently, then chewed his bottom lip and stared through the windshield tint at a mostly empty two-lane road. "Her name was Cynthia" he said firmly. "Now she's just another sad song." I remember being both grateful for his sudden arrival in that day, and a fleeting need to punch him in the face as hard as I could. Not that he was being flippant, mind you, but because I had instantly opened my chest cavity to a virtual stranger. The deep wounds that won't heal, but rather form lesson scars and chords for weeping guitars.

"I shouldn't talk, though" Ayte continued (and I wasn't sure if he was being sincere or throwing me a pacifier) "because I have never been in love." It surprised me. Made me stare at his profile for a moment, and perhaps the reader has guessed at what the narrative threads have been knitting, but I stared and calmed down. Even one crack at that holy grail of the heart space, big Love, was not guaranteed for each of us born from that reservoir and expressly designed to seek its maddening elusive answers. "Tantalizing" I spoke out loud, not intending to have the thought escape as such. Ayte let it slide. We rode in silence for five minutes, both watching the beautiful blues and greens of the island, and then he slowed to pull over. It was blindfold and back seat time.

I surprised myself by going for such a ludicrous ride. For accepting the odd terms and for talking the whole time about how Cynthia and I had met (me playing a sad mellow piece outdoors near Thetis lake that drew her over for a listen) ... Ayte responded through my sentences with scattered "uh huh", "mmhmm" sounds. I spoke openly and realized how much I had needed to purge to a new person, a new set of ears not tired of the repeating theme of Cynthia leaves Fred. During this blindfolded backseat "oratorio", I also attempted to focus on distance and sounds beneath the roomy LeSabre, since I knew the island fairly well and was very curious about where we were heading.

What I was able to glean, as my bitter sounding tale concluded, revolved around a left hand turn and the sound and feel of gravel under tires. "We're there?" I asked, and Ayte replied with a terse "almost." It took at least another minute, at slower speed and over steady small dips and bounces, to come to a stop. My new musician acquaintance turned to speak at the back seat, because I could smell his very odd breath which was almost medicinal. A funky blend of rich dense hashish and Scope, maybe. "Alright, buddy. I know this is fucked up and all, but I'm going to lead you into the place before that blindfold comes off. Yeah?" What else was there to do but to nod and go along with the "house rules"? Frankly, at that point I didn't want to see a grow-op or a specific location.

Ayte opened the passenger door on the driver's side and I heard him grab my guitar gig bag, with "I'll carry this in for you". Then, the door closing, his footfalls around the back of the Buick, and another door opening. Cool fingers on my right wrist, a light grip and then release so that I could step free into cooling air. It was strangely quiet out there for a moment, and I suppose I expected to hear the sounds of his band tuning or, warming up. He let me rise tall to my full towering standing height of minus-midget (compared to he) and then those long cool fingers closed around my right wrist again and he said "over this way, Fred" with a gentle pull. I walked and wondered what the hell I had gotten into, but not enough to call it off. I must admit it was the first spark of real life I had felt inside me since the love evisceration crisis. I was silently anticipating an experience with possibly the coolest, deadliest unknown band in the country; little old me privy to a kick ass sneak preview of something that would break and break large. Yes, Ayte's thumbnail scrape and harmonic pluck had impressed me that much.

He opened what seemed like two locks. The door was soundless on its hinges. "Two steps up, bro" he said with another gentle wrist tug, and up I went into a space that felt a few degrees warmer than the rapidly cooling evening. My feet sounded on creaky floorboards and we walked maybe twenty feet straight ahead, then stopped, and I heard another doorknob being turned. There, immediately after a few halting steps into what felt to be a much larger space, the pungent whack of west coast smoke. Right upside the nostrils. Heady and dense. I heard an amplifier buzzing and could make out the sounds of distant male voices from what was surely another room behind yet another closed door.

"A beer for you?" Ayte asked as his hand removed itself from my wrist. I heard the ruffle of my guitar bag as he removed the shoulder strap and set it down somewhere near us. "Can I take this off now?", my hands pointed index fingers toward the bandana. "Yeah, and... a beer for you?" I tugged the knot behind my head up and away whilst answering "I'd love a beer", and my vision found a large crazy wall across the room as Ayte pivoted on his boot heels to leave for the doorway that contained those other voices. "Be right back, dude" he spoke over a shoulder. "Make yourself at home. Read the lyric wall."

And.

Holy.

Shit.

3.

The lyric wall. The crazy wall. It ran for thirty feet, from floor to eight foot ceiling, and the old recreation room wood panel had been primed and painted an off-white. Every square inch of its surface was emblazoned in felt marker language and bizarre drawings. My eyes adjusted and didn't know where to lock focus, but immediately I was thrown off balance by confusion. I didn't recognize the words, letters, even the meaning of most of the visuals. It was a hybrid of bizarre Egyptian hieroglyph and Chinese-like script with a flourish of widely scattered comic book style drawings; all of this was small and packed densely across the wall. I exhaled a tremulous "wow". Beneath my feet a stupendously ornate and intricately woven oriental carpet had me instantly in mind of Clive Barker's "Weaveworld" as well as a great Henry Rollins concert I had once upon a time drunkenly attended. (he and the band were set up on a beautiful rug, Henry full of angsty testosterone menace, ink, bare feet, perspiration) The carpet was just as strange as the wall. It looked barely recognizable as something my brain could latch onto safely. As I stared down into its subtle tea-stained twenty by twelve area, it seemed that my feet sank just slightly into its very low pile.

My wide open eyes took in the two side walls which were left in their ugly wood panel original state, and then I managed a one eighty pivot to become even more freaked out. Have you ever been visually overwhelmed all at once? Not known where to focus and react due to the ultimate combination of mind-blow components? I scanned across three distinct "stations" where the band's "instruments" were set up; my stare dialled back to the "drum kit"... this was a hybridized amassment of traditional Paiste cymbals, hi-hats, with partial sections of the usual drum kit hardware, but

but

the hardware was inserted deep into a thick twisting bleached length of what looked to be ancient driftwood. Along its bottom curve near the floor, smaller sections of metal tubing had been inserted and bolted into place, from which four different colored Converse All-Star shoes connected as de facto stabilizers. I wanted to burst into laughter but it was instantly confusing and frightening. Where there would normally be "rack toms", three sea turtle shells of varying sizes were positioned at identical striking angles. Held in place by more strange dull metallic tubing that protruded up from the driftwood trunk. There were washers, nuts and bolts. Each shell had a skin drawn across the open bowl side, fastened all around with small tribal looking bones that were somewhat flattened on top. No floor tom. I was too stunned in the first shock moments to check for a kick drum or pedal, but instantly knew that the wide chunk of gnarly driftwood served in that capacity. I was thinking you talk about your hippies...

and it dawned on me that the other room's voices had entirely muted, as though they wanted me to be utterly alone in the freaked out processing of what I was looking at. There were two "amplifiers" that flanked the bizarre organic-slash-traditional drum set. Of identical dimensions, they were square and a flat black with no visible buttons or input jacks. The material in front resembled that which can be found on Marshall cabinets; a thick cross-hatched cloth that was seamlessly flush with the rest of the container. I stepped toward the nearest waist-high "amp" and saw no power source but could hear its steady buzzing from within. With a trembling hand I dared to touch its upper surface. Cold, dull, but resembling or seeming to be made from a form of obsidian material. I had a terror twitch thought that I was looking at something ancient. A sound emitting fossil device. With no visible power source or controls, I guessed that it must be some manner of... what, really? A mentally controlled amplification system? Across from the hybrid driftwood percussion kit, ludicrous with its array of handcrafted Paiste products, the other humming black box stood in waiting. I felt frozen in place but moved my attention back to the tangled madness of the lyric wall. An anxious anticipation bubbled in my lower stomach and before I could focus anew on the strange hieroglyphic jumble, that other room's door opened quickly on a squeaky hinge.

Ayte was first through the doorway, then two equally tall and thinly built males who were wearing fucking goalie masks. I'd seen bands wear masks on stage before, but this was a rehearsal. Ayte was bare faced and unbelievably at first I didn't look directly at what he was carrying because I was drawn to the others. You may recall my description of the dark blue blindfold bandana with its tiny magic mushroom motif? Ditto the ludicrous masks. Dark blue verging on black, with brilliant amber 'shrooms equally and densely arranged. A part of my mind said okay, they're rehearsing a debut show for me. There followed a split second of relaxing into the possibility, but then I looked at the two instruments being carried and quickly at one of the humming featureless amplifier boxes.

Two identical jet black ultra glossy tubes of approximately traditional electric guitar length. A circumference of perhaps a large man's forearm at its widest. Ayte's instrument was completely encircled on its shining surface by at least twenty "strings" of various diameter that went from thick piano density to nearly invisible, but the thing of it was

oh, the memory of it hitting me fresh

These "lines" ran the length of the tube from where they vanished into holes in a flat base (envision an unopened soup can lid), up to an impossible braid that formed a cone on the upper end. The tuning end, I supposed. These fucking "strings" were actually beams of indescribably gorgeous laser-like light. They were solid beams in an array of in-between tones that I had never before seen. Like a mushroom version of advanced-cosmos color wheel photon strands. A furtive stunned glance at the other tube-carrying mask-wearing musician revealed that he had less of these beams on his instrument, and they were generally thicker but no less vivid. I thought through a melting mind - guitar and bass?

"This is Fred" announced Ayte as he walked across the ornate rug with an outstretched free hand that held a beer bottle. I was oddly relieved to see a local brand that I recognized, and accepted the ice cold offering with a failing voice but a no-doubt electrocuted expression. The two goalie masks nodded silently as Ayte's equally tall brothers-in-sound took their positions. I neglected to mention a normal everyday drum stool because in my shock at trying to identify the driftwood creation's makeup, I hadn't noticed it. Drummer took his seat and I saw two of the usual sticks in his hands. Pale skin, long thin fingers. He was dressed head to toe in a dark blue robe that had me in mind of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" orgy scene. Equally silent but for the mask nodding, the "bassist" took position in front his sound box device and cradled the light beam tube in his arms like a baby. His robe was a Buckingham green.

"Wow. I don't even have the beginning of a clue what I'm looking at" - my voice had returned in a cracked timbre. Ayte moved in front of me with a short staccato chuckle, and said "excuse me bro" as I stepped back and away so he could stand in front of his sound box. He too, hoisted the bizarre laser beam tube instrument up into a cradled position with his right hand supporting its bottom. I pressed on with a voice almost resembling mine - "What are those things?" The goalie masked "bassist" shot a coldly appraising dark pupil duo at me through his eye holes. "Do you think he is prepared?" the guy asked with a head swivel toward Ayte. His voice was deep, too, with precisely enunciated vowels and a crisp 's'. Ayte nodded at his bandmate and said "Hey bro Fred, why don't you make yourself comfortable somewhere, but stand back a few feet." I looked to see no places to sit other than floor, but nodded silently and carried my beer over to the lyric wall. My eyes searched its craziness for something I could make sense of as I paced across carpet and then floorboards. Questions by the flood were coming to me. I was tripping, for sure. "What language is this?" I couldn't help but to ask, and turned to look at the strange trio as I slid down to squat with my back against the cartoon and hieroglyph mash-up.

The lanky drummer took his throne and spoke in an almost identical baritone to match his bass player's : "There is no equivalent here for that which you name as language", and as my blowing mind began to mull his crux, he took sticks to hi-hats and shut me up forever in a time bottle. Immediately reminiscent of the sizzling groove of the hats in Steve Miller's "Swingtown", but a few beats per minute slower, and with a skanky jazzified slink. I was fucking mesmerized to the Nth, then and there. Space and the lack of reality in that room conspired with his stick work as those hi-hats were impacted and accented by open/close deftness. He had a loose and very relaxed posture. I was astounded when he injected a skipping funky kick pattern through that driftwood relic. (I hadn't noticed the kick pedal at all) A warm resounding richness in the thumping tree trunk filled the room's every cubic inch, and he worked an impossible skipping thudding nuanced wood-rich bottom motif into those weaving sizzling hats. I was more fucked than Cynthia had ever fucked me.

Ayte and the nameless other stood in mannequin repose, both sets of eyes on me as I squatted against the mystery wall. I began to wonder if the blindfold had been treated with some exotic unknown form of hallucinogen. This was way out there. Beyond beyond's beyond out there. I fell into that strutting kick and hi-hat pattern and waited for what I knew was coming. There was no traditional snare drum on that "kit", but I felt the placement of what was about to be added to this spinal manifesto. Call it the born musician and quick ear in me. Just at the very moment where I would have added it, the "snare" crack of beautiful resonating driftwood fell right into the sweet pocket. Smack dab organic perfection. How was he able to execute such a steady tone from hitting ages old dead wood? How the hell was he doing that incredible stutter accent on every fourth stroke? His hands were fluid ghost note appendages. Ayte, who I had to steal a glance at, was smiling from ear to ear at me. I didn't realize it then, but I had performed a stunned open-mouthed slow slide down the wall and was then sitting with my ass on the floor, legs splayed straight out. The beer was white-knuckled between both hands.

I was going to say the common "oh my god" just when the other goalie-masked mushroom person hoisted his tube and intersected two beautiful orange light beams with the first two fingers of his left hand. My stillborn utterance died happily beneath a v-shaped fingering that suddenly filled the drum groove with a subsonic note unlike any I had ever experienced. It shook my entrails but wasn't necessarily loud. He moved the v of his fingers deeper into the laser beam strings, toward the bottom of that tubular miracle. I heard within the felt bass tones a pulsing melodic layer of almost orchestral ancient-feeling sounds. It was the molten rock of Sooke river banks tumbling and instantly cooling. It was the entire unabridged encyclopedia of Orca whale pod knowledge. I managed to lift the beer to my lips for a desperate swig, being forcefully penetrated by this grooving ineffable rhythm section magic trick. Another type of virginity was removed by a spinning planet and the tick tock of how we identify its spin. I mean, deflowered deluxe. Event horizon met.

Ayte's turn was coming. I realized it and all of my attention went to his zone of being. The carpet beneath The Inklings was also a carpet of unfolding skronk and marrow melt, all set up sweetly for Ayte's chops, about to chop me into Fred minced. Do you think that my newfound oddball friend cut loose with a mother-of-all-humbling cascade of impossible lead lines? Do you think he put Einstein and Hendrix in a galactic blender? Ayte bent his face over the myriad new-colors of his instrument's photon strings, still grinning at my reaction, and fluidly unleashed a barrage of in-pocket rhythm playing that was more UN than OF. I mean, not the sound of guitar strings at all. Not the inflection of floating keyboard quavers. Not nearly but yes nearly a reed instrument. It was a fucking flavor. He played it with one hand tapping across the various string beams, moving along the tube's length, in a way that was Chapman Stick-like. I thought of King Crimson being produced by Satan in a studio once financed by God.The tapping tempo funky clean impossible to identify notes were perfectly placed within the magie sonique. Something at once cello and sexy overdriven Stratocaster happened from beneath and within his hands. I next attempted to regain my feet and couldn't. The beer bottle slipped from its clenched holding place to spill across my thigh. I made no move to stop its flow. Wet. Dream.

Ayte began to gyrate a little. His crazy dreads fell into and around the glowing music tube as he brought forth the end of my previous reality. He gave the tube a little rotation and restarted by sliding an entire palm across and down into the beam-strings. All of the myriad colors intensified and I watched him gather up a half dozen of the strands for a fist clenching sound meld. No apt words to describe the symphonic emotional impact of that technique. It was a flavor, a memory, and a teaching. The drumming-math and bass-paint shaping followed suit. Everything in that strange room, besides me, coalesced into a unity that shattered each baby step of my own traditional music learning curve. That drummist began to attack the turtle shell toms with cocky blurring slurring accent fills that I couldn't figure out at all, yet they worked beyond the scope of compositional integrity. He kept an open hi-hat pattern alive and jumping, yet skipped and stammered the funk out of those bizarre rack-toms, all of that sounding ancient and faerie woodsian. I swear I could then smell Pacific rainforest. Drummer and bassist and Ayte; they became lost to the glory of their cosmic channel noise, more physically animated. I wanted to pee my pants and weep. Privy to more than I could have dreamt, stoned or sober.

Finally I regained a modicum of motor function. My knees obeyed a distant brain instruction and I awkwardly gathered myself up and pushed clumsily along the lyric wall until stumble standing. Roomshake wood note star powder was alive all around me. I looked at the music makers in their triplet identity jamming and suddenly felt a new heightened buzzing inside me. Ayte seemed to perceive it telepathically and his eyes found mine. His stare was of joyous hedonistic abandon, with his dreads on the soar, and he exhorted me with that gaze. A look passed between The Inklings that I caught just barely before time and place disintegrated into my nearly out-of-self trance shuffle. I moved to my guitar case, one thigh beer soaked, on the verge of tears and rebirth. What I remember next is that I had the trusty Yamaha and its frayed strap hanging from me. Ayte began to play a quieter steady note that resembled the minor A of my newest song, then nodded toward the magic carpet beneath his big boots. I obeyed and don't recall walking to where he was playing, but yet I have a crystalline memory of how the sound in the room seemed so perfectly uniform and balanced. The volume blend didn't at all diminish or increase according to the conventional rules of physics. Proximity to the driftwood drum kit or the laser light music tubes meant nothing to the room-filling volumes. I stood in front of Ayte. He eye-locked me and mouthed the count : "one-two-three" that segued as though practiced into all four of us playing and interpreting my newest piece.

I didn't think. I knew. So did they. It touched upon my fondest moments of being on stage with a team. A unit of sound delivery and same page intent. That is the magical shit when it happens right. What took place for four high-heavenly minutes with The Inklings reached for new earthly descriptives. To pluck, strum, and emote my way unconsciously through that piece of music, and to hear for the very first time (ever, anywhere) such an accompaniment... wood-rich notes and humanistic Paiste cymbals played along with me. The bass melody was something I could never have written; a serpentine sensual lovemaking yearning underpin. Ayte? He stepped back and did exactly what he had done earlier to my Yamaha. He plucked a brilliant yellow beam of light and let it sing like a quasar choir, sing somehow in a delectable A minor.

When it finished, and it finished with a unison ringing chord that could only have been telepathic and worm-holed, I was a crying shaking mess. I shook my head and let the Yamaha hang slack at my stomach, only then wondering at what technological marvel had the guitar been amplified into their mix... and the drummer said very gently to me : "welcome home, brother."

He said it, and it coincided with two things. I remembered him the way we might sometimes remember a kid from grade school, like an old friend taken away by Life and folded into the mental pastiche of all of those names and faces on the cusp of memory loss. Was there some fear when he spoke that to me, then Ayte and the other guy nodded enthusiastically? Yes, only natural, yes? The second thing was a sudden intense itching burn deep inside the meat of my strumming hand's palm. I looked down in confusion and they all laughed softly. Gentle buzzing could be heard from the idling sound boxes. The room was liberally fragranced at that point with earthy tree trunk bouquet. I looked down at the star-shaped puncture scar in my palm from when I had apparently fallen from my bicycle at a young age beyond this memory's visuals. It was red and inflamed. Just then at the point of awareness in a blossom, Ayte placed his sound tube carefully on the floor and approached me with both hands extended.

He took my shoulders, very gently and with softening eyes, to spin me around so that I was facing the lyric wall. Then he pushed just as gently but with a no-give firmness, and we walked to the wall slowly. I saw it there in a stylized comic bookish black marker square border, but its details rendered in muted colors that looked quite old. It was positioned right where my back had been only five minutes before; how had I missed it? Perhaps, in the hindsight-retrospect twinning, the artwork had birthed itself during the playing of my still incomplete new song. Ayte and I stopped before the drawing, a few feet from its mind-frying meaning. "Are you ready to write the bridge now, my brother?"

(I took it as right the bridge, and then write)

Choreographed in absurdist but appropriate fashion, the other two voices repeated with "Are you ready to write the bridge now, our brother?" My eyes went deep into the drawing of four of us, where I had obtained their height and the other two were unmasked. We were together on a circular stage within the open edged lip of a classic flying saucer, giving a performance to an unseen audience; perhaps the artist. When upon turning I saw the other two had removed their masks and bore striking facial resemblances to Ayte, I was not as shocked as you might expect. They were bald, pale, with nearly identical features. When the mad throb and itch in my palm drew my attention and I saw something tiny and with pulsation just beneath the skin, I wasn't as shocked as you might expect. An implant. A memory. A timing. I stared at it and Fred began to become Fred no more. That strange moving and sinking sensation earlier, within the ornate oriental rug, began to shimmer shiver into my legs, and when I turned to stare at Ayte and met him there eye-level, I wasn't as shocked as you might expect.

The new I. The new I looked once more at my hand and watched the self-propelled implant with its tiny convex seed shape as it pushed its way out of epidermis. This is what proper music can channel, came the thought. (along with the first of countless notions to break into raucous dancing and singing abandon) I looked back into my brother's eyes and we shared our second handshake. A firm pressing of palms and a transition and return of the tiny alien sliver that had been with me for thirty earth years. With me, one of the chosen few. The selected infiltrator vessels. Sent by authorities I would soon know of and also strangely remember in a way that vacuumed time and history, clean.

You want epiphany? How about Aha - these are the true composers and it is from their channel that the humans dip and borrow, not knowing, calling what results as their own.

"I am ready to write the bridge" I told Ayte, (in my head I spelled it "right") and that is the story of how Fred passed his ultimate audition. Stay tuned for our debut performance, coming soon to a night sky near you.

[rjmorrisonuniverse-blog]

Three Days To Animal

He has to make it to the lake. He has to make it a dozen city blocks to the lake. Go southbound afoot. Easier said than done. A phrase beats his cranial drum - "three days to animal"... one look at his entrance door would hint at this dark truth. Two sturdy chain locks. The eerie phrase was coined to describe what would happen to humanity once deprived of potable water for 72 hours and beyond. Let us take it farther; no water, very little food, all hydro knocked out across the world grid for seven days and counting, banking systems fully crashed, money useless, humanity disconnected but for small pockets of family and friendship who have banded together... if three days to animal became a full week, what then?

He has to escape the immediate madness of his high-rise apartment building, now a potential and literal death trap. Through the Sheetrock and that fire-rated metal-clad entrance door, the wails of doom paint a hallway, thirty floors stacked. Smoke detectors taking turns on the cry, too, as various neighbors attempt to heat their space with small controlled fires. His sixty year old ears have heard the beauty of children in laughter, a loon calling out across morning's misty lake, his departed wife in the throes of lovemaking, rest her fortunate soul not to be alive for this particular winter solstice. Now his ears are starved for contact with his son and daughter, out there somewhere in the meltdown of society and hundreds of miles across a great lake. He has to make it to the lake.

Several friends and neighbors have knocked upon his door since the predicted but unthinkable came to pass. NASA had confirmed in 2011 that the following year was sure to be one of high solar flare activity. These, at first calm in tone statements, had fit like a puzzle piece into the amped up fear mongering about Mayan calendar end times with that alarmingly specific final date of December 21, 2012. As the new year rolled past another highly anticipated midnight of Gregorian definition, along with it came the increasing awareness that many of the signposts were actually happening. Europe had been blitzed with a lethal winter far out of the ordinary. The polar ice masses were melting and falling away even faster than the most strident warnings predicted. Terrifying tornadic super storms had been tearing up the weather hardened parts of North America in new vicious ways. Mother Earth seemed to grow a belly of lethal intentions as earthquakes and tsunamis had begun to meet the wrathful sky, to join the atonal encompassing doom song. This was just the natural anomaly warning knell. What of society?

Lost amid the tweets and Facebook status updates, the trolling and scrolling, porn surfing and hacking, humanity had been equally stormy. Tyrants being overthrown by pissed off citizenry in the streets; that should have been a good thing. One by one they began to topple as the vast interconnected cyber-vascular world-heart thumped to a new rhythm, but far too many weren't noticing. Too many were contented in their daily routines. It was a me-first mirror gazing that supported the great undoing. As 2011's warnings grew strident under the weight of gravitas from increasingly in-the-know voices, it was a mere pittance of humanity that took note and began to prepare. Of those preparing, most were painted as whack jobs in the mass media; either trying to profit from the looming uncertainty or spun out on baseless what-ifs. Here, however, in the white knuckle now, he has been caught with pants down and apathy up. No larder. No stock of drinking water. In a life filled with control measures and guiding bodies of governance, so quickly and thoroughly did the matrix threads come loose.

This story's protagonist, the ever pragmatic sixty year old Glen Loach, had entered 2012 with a niggling concern that grew throughout a prematurely warm Spring and swampy lethal heatwave Summer. His home is Toronto, an alpha city, an economic engine, a multicultural how-to model, and a place not high up on the list of world consciousness where alleged alpha cities are listed, analyzed, rated. Now then, as everything he can hear coming through slightly opened windows is a horror wash of human suffering and property damage, Glen knows he must get to the lake. He is parched, dizzy, ravenous, desperate, cold. The electric baseboard heater that used to overdo itself unless he fiddled with the thermostat, now a useless wall attachment. It had taken two days for his one bedroom apartment to cool down into the discomfort zone. By day three he was wearing layers; t-shirt, sweater, winter jacket. Beneath his casual slacks, he wore white long johns and doubled up wool socks.

When he ran out of water and had drunk the toilet tank and bowl dry, Glen began to spend more time staring out at the city through a large picture window in the living room, which his mind-voice had begun to call a "dying room"... by day five he was witnessing acts of raw violence on Sherbourne street as once polite Canadians devolved into pure survival instinct. Evidently law enforcement had all but vanished. "Katrina, my ass" Glen croaked into the window pane as he watched three men beat down and unmercifully head-kick a fellow citizen. They stomped him to death and took his backpack. Not a cop in sight. They were all with their families now. "Jobs" were no longer jobs. Glen cursed himself for having no batteries in the drawer; an old AM/FM portable radio would sit mute during the endless hour crawl of not knowing. Up and down the building's halls during day one of null electricity, not a person owned a portable battery powered radio; such was the dependance upon wall sockets and the holy internet. There are a lot of seniors in this housing complex, and few of them were going to venture forth into the suddenly lit urban fuse with its sirens and disjointed honking horns en masse.

This day, the one that compels him to defeat primal fear so that he can intend to strike out toward the waterfront, has him a nervous wreck. He paces the apartment and tries to ignore shouts from the hallway, various fists pounding on doors, the cries of names once familiar and meaningful but now emptied. Without the overpowering shadow of 2012's forecasted calamity, would a week-long global blackout carry this apocalyptic taint? Would he have been watching night times aglow with the various burning buildings and cars that he could see from his tenth floor perch? The body of a stomped-dead man would not have lain ignored in the street, would it? Utter shock had crippled the self anointed kings of a world filled with life, once the loudly proclaimed became fact. Glen was cut off and had no way to know what was taking place in other locations. Based on the endless terror of what he could see and hear in a once safe city, after just a week, it wasn't a stretch to imagine the scale of undoing on a global stage.

There would be a collapse of "government", of course. So-called leaders would be hunkered down in their apocalypse bunkers, as varied and effective as each nation's preparation and the fiscal attentiveness to it. Chiefs of Staff, military might, emergency laws; how to know what was happening? It shocked Glen to the guts just how quickly his entire perceived world collapsed inwardly, leaving only a shaky starving thirsting widower to stare with raccoon eyes through the protective glass of a window. There were no dispensers of information, now. No talking heads on the flat screen to tell him what to wear tomorrow, how to find food, which locations might provide emergency shelter... no people came knocking with helpful words. Sirens wailed and went silent after three long days. Satellites in orbit had been deep fried. Humanity's rigid reliance upon its technology created a perfect brutal confluence. Glen has never been a man of religious faith, and therefore his isolation is absolute during the last hours of this unraveling coil. Early on when huddling in the pitch dark hallway with a few neighbors and their candle dancing shadows, the consensus was to stay put. Sooner than later this would be fixed. Someone would show up. Building management didn't live there but surely it was just a matter of time before help and information arrived... wrong. A lot of people left, took their chances on the crazy fear filled streets. Some returned to say it again - "stay where you are, it is insanity out there."

He is down to a couple of tins of kidney beans, some soda crackers, croutons, sweet mix pickles with the juice already drained... the trending of winters in his city has been one of diminished snowfall, and here in the disastrous embraces of December 2012 his balcony is dry as a bone. No melting flakes for drinking water, sir. Bad luck for you that the power grid was destroyed when you were just about to go grocery shopping, sir. Glen has considered attempting to capture a pigeon, for the protein, but they are now not landing where they did for a decade in their usual taunting shitting way. He is dying and feels mocked in the act. So, to the lake. Or death. How will he fare? What form of animalistic madness waits out there in those city blocks that separate him from open drinkable water?

Oh, to be the strapping man of his younger years. Of the open violence now gripping his metropolis and indeed the world entire, how much of it was based on survival? How much stemmed from the blown open fabric of law, control, deterrence? There lived the actual terror ; that Glen's belief in his fellow man as a generally decent creature could be so wrong. That, given the opportunity and enough catalyzing fear, blood would so easily flow, buildings would burn, a species rife with its collective incompleteness of spirit would so devour itself. Indeed, the proof had been in the rancid pudding all through the summer months of 2012, when cities around the planet reported extreme spikes in criminal behavior. It had been Glen's consistently vocalized opinion and fear that the Mayan foretold apocalypse was to be an emotion fuelled prophecy born from the minority. The loud minority. The criminal, primeval, fearful, the predatory, despicable minority. Aside from they, also the people of weaknesses. They who would binge on their drug of choice to cope with escalating worry. An irony not lost on this man who relies upon the sweetened sting of whisky. That potent energy available to each human mind, once collected amplified and siphoned, tick tock tick tock.

To risk death in order to clutch at continued life, or to stay in these walls until it no longer matters? It has to be the choice of life. He has children and grandchildren, siblings and their children, friendships, love, so many reasons not to perish in this apartment. It is possible, isn't it?, that out there in the streets he might find pockets of sanity. There may be groups of people holed up in supermarkets, public buildings, doing their best to formulate a plan. Glen shivers and decides that he must leave at first morning light. He pulls a small wooden stool closer to the living room window and watches the still surreal sight of a Milky Way twinkling its belt across downtown Toronto's firmament.

Before attempting "sleep", he visits his face in the bathroom mirror. How many movies feature a bravura acting mirror scene? Mickey Rourke in "Barfly" comes to mind as Glen sets a candle on a dish down upon the vanity top. The amber contortion of his face, old beyond those sixty years, seems to set him up for a release of the tears that have remained mostly dammed. If he thinks about rejoining his potently missed wife, his beloved Pauline who succumbed to cancer after a long battle, then it is within that seething cauldron of inexpressible all-at-once where the dam may fail. Not a day goes by without the empty chamber in his chest reminding him that only his family keeps him here. He has watched the world change. He has been a "peacekeeper" for his country, stationed in a landscape of dirt and the dirt poor, where concealed bombs and sniper attacks took their awful toll. Glen suffers multiple forms of stress, not the least of which being a sense of ultra dislocation. Retired from the forces, retired against his will from an easy loving marriage, and now retired from a world that made at least some form of sense when he was younger.

He looks at his unremarkable face in the flame lit mirror. A shock of white wiry hair emulates the letter 'u' in a horizontal band just above his ears, down to the neck, bald and smooth on top from the ripe old age of 40. His eyebrows are unruly caterpillars, also white. The nose is Walter Matthau's but crisscrossed by the capillaries of a cope drinker, though it must be said that Glen is a gentle drinker. A private one, too. His glasses of Southern Comfort are just that; comfort. His start time, usually a mid-afternoon depending on the mood of a day's heart, issues forth a slow slide into numbness. It is then that his exhausted eyes may deal with CNN, CBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, and all the other alphabet pimps. Now in the half dark, sick and sober, Glen examines his prodigious walrus mustache which hasn't kept pace with the whitening of other hair, then he feels the latest stab of "I sure could use a drink"... his mind strays to the collective madness that must be gripping a world of addicts now deprived of their fixes. "We were addicted to hydro, too" he speaks to the deadened light fixture above a mirror he can no longer handle.

Glen moves his pear shaped body to the toilet and marvels that he can still produce urine, though it is a mere trickle. The building has grown increasingly quiet and he considers that others, like him, have decided to take their chances outdoors. It was becoming evident that the lights, heat, and water were not coming back on. His Christmas had been most emphatically cancelled. His last evening in this his shelter of quiet grieving and coping, December 28 of a fated 2012. As she shuffles by candlelight to his mess of a bed, Glen worries about leaving the apartment building at a time when his family members might be arriving to find him. He will write a note in the morning, tape it to the door, pray that everyone is alive and stays where they are. He feels old and used up beyond his years, and therefore feels more the expendable one.

In bed, the room so dark with no bleed of city light, Glen's mind does what it has been doing for days... it becomes a worm. It tunnels its way through the same thought patterns, all of them unfinished and colliding overlapping interrupting. What do we do with a blameless catastrophe? Being angry with cancer cells is like being angry with a sun going through natural cycles of flare activity. Like being pissed off at the planet for the way it wiped out two million more Japanese citizens during the summer of the final year. An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown, a domino horror story so inanimate and indifferent as the fragile species daring to play custodian to Earth suffers every consequence. She was so at peace when she died. He held her hand and she went "into" the flowers of the oil painting across from that final bed. For two years he had witnessed the inward vacuuming of her physical beauty, replaced equally with something just as lovely. Pauline's eyes and their fire, never changed. Fear took hold at times but she retained the same strength that had guided them through parenting and the challenges of being married to a military man who spent too much time away from home. That was the key word; "home". Her body withered, her face became a wrinkled mask of itself, but home never left her eyes. "I . Am. Going into the flowers..." her last utterance.

When Pauline's body released her true self, Glen "died" too. He was replaced by a body double and a similar but altered soul. Unlike so many, too many, he was loved and supported by both blood and non-blood family. It meant the world, but the world was horribly different. Routine having played such a role in his life, this was Glen's post Pauline definition of living : the numbed ritualistic movements of a day whose name no longer mattered. The liquor store. The sad hours spent reading, preparing, accepting the feeling that he would not be much longer for this world even though his health had always been excellent despite a two decade need for alcohol. That it would come to pass in such a long-predicted preposterous way...

I will rise with the first light. Take my chances, see what happens, get to water, take it a step and a block at a time.

It becomes his deepest sleep in a week. Wearing a coat and beneath every available blanket, not even his snoring will intrude. His last thoughts revolve around the bizarre feeling of liberation that arrives with calamity beyond control.

Glen Loach awakens gradually. The weight of life is there waiting for him, sitting squarely on his chest, and yet now a clarity permeates his upset world. His thickly muscled legs swing free of the bed and he hoists his pear shaped torso to a standing position by gripping a nearby window sill. He may not look it, but Glen is a powerful man even at sixty ripened years. That stout midsection and his general demeanor carries a history of surprise. Those who sized him up, made visual assumptions, then challenged him...

His tongue is a raspy stick. To the balcony he shuffles where he opens a can of kidney beans for breakfast, breathing through his mouth as he chews. The sun will be rising up through a dense curtain of shapeless cloud cover. He hears very little out there, and the hallway seems muted as well. Sitting on the edge of a sofa cushion, slowly scooping beans from a can, grateful for the juice even as it causes him to retch, Glen senses that he will be meeting up with his beloved Pauline soon. He may be thirsty and exhausted beyond describing, but there has been a greater thirst spanning the long years without his partner.

He spoons the last portion of disgusting kidney beans into his mouth and aches for a hot shower. It is remarkable how many years have passed since the loss of his wife, and also how far from his military tidiness and preparedness he has fallen. The flashlight contains three half dead D cell batteries. There are no others in the apartment and he must use the torch judiciously; ten years ago Glen would have kept extras on hand. Pauline would have made doubly sure of it, though he can count on the fingers of one mitt how many of these long lasting power outages... ah, but this one is different. His plan for the day is to reach the lake unscathed, fill a large plastic jug with water, and hopefully find other citizens who haven't regressed to a primal state of being. If he can fill a canvas shopping bag with food items, anywhere it can safely happen, that will be enormous. The word "safely" brings his thoughts around to the Browning.

Glen unlocks a hallway storage closet door, then a small metal safe within. He removes another tin box, unlocks it, and retrieves his old service pistol along with a single 13-round magazine. Preparedness; what he wouldn't give now for a second ammo clip. At the dining room table he arms his weapon, inspects it as he has done countless times. Popular with military personnel the world over since its introduction in 1935, this is a Browning Hi-Power. A single-action 9mm handgun that holds 13 rounds and is lethal up to 50 metres. Heavy of trigger, "single-action" means that the hammer must be manually cocked prior to firing. In combat situations, or with Glen's example as a peacekeeper stationed in a hostile environment, it was typical to keep the hammer cocked and the safety catch on.

This Browning has never been fired in the field. He was an expert shot on practice ranges, but had been fortunate not to require the weapon during active duty despite heavy casualties to Canadian forces in Afghanistan before and leading up to his retirement. Glen holds the ever familiar grip and stares down at the gun barrel. That dull metal has been on the inside of his mouth, exactly once. After a particularly pitiful night of drinking, dreading that empty bed, reeling anew from his children lecturing him across the telephone miles that he must leave Toronto and join them in upstate New York, that there were no reasons to stay... Glen had considered the unthinkable. Even flushed with whisky and its perverse dark logic, he knew that suicide must be a cardinal sin. Without those ever valid reasons to continue living and coping, his children and grandchildren, it would still amount to a craven disregard for the miracle-gift of life... should he bust a cap on himself...

He tucks the pistol into his jacket's inside pocket, zips it shut, sighs a lifetime's worth. How will he think of that trigger in a few more days? When does the offing of oneself become justifiable? Over a million souls per year exercise that most drastic option, most of them male. As balanced as Glen likes to think himself to be, in a world so alienating to his age bracket, he could easily opt out if not for the loves in his life. If it hurts, why stay? The kidney beans churn in his belly and for a few minutes it feels like he might need to vomit. It has been days since his last bowel movement, and that was taken into a dry toilet bowl. The bathroom's door remains closed for obvious and necessary reasons. The toothpaste and toothbrush have been in the kitchen; Glen squeezes some Crest into his mouth, uses what little saliva he can manage to brush his teeth. Disgusting. He spits into the sink and feels the pistol rubbing on his ribs. There are estimates of up to 900 million firearms in active rotation on planet Earth, 270 million of them in the United States. When all the other guns are factored in... the amassment of an arsenal... staggering numbers come to mind. Now here is Glen Loach; an expert shot with a licensed weapon, about to rely upon his Browning 9mm for personal safety.

He tucks his flashlight into a right front coat pocket. He reaches into cupboard space beneath the sink for a plastic jug that may hold nearly a gallon of water. This, he places into a large canvas shopping bag that should afford him extra room in case he finds food items during his walk. In the entrance hall he picks up a set of keys that give him pause. Locks, keys, alarm codes, laws, law enforcement, judicial systems, prison systems, military systems. The safeguard of a species against its own kind, because the species is at odds with itself. It wants to live as though removed from the natural cycle of survival. Predators and prey. Glen slowly unchains his door, keeping it quiet, and steps into a dark pungent hallway. Urine, excrement, fire smoke, dust, terror.

The hallway is windowless and almost pitch black. Glen flicks the flashlight to life and after quietly locking his door, moves quickly to a stairwell exit several dozen yards away. Passing apartments and thickly layered odors, he can hear weeping from a unit near the darkened elevator lobby. This is someone new to the building. For an intense second he wants to stop, knock, enquire. Can't. No time. At the stairwell exit he can hear a menacing moan of wind on the other side; it seems to mimic the emotional feel of a society collapsed in fear. Glen pushes the heavy door open, plays his flashlight along the grey concrete steps, then begins the ten floors of descent. Kitchen garbage bags have been discarded in several of the doorways where the staircase does its dogleg turn, and the air is ripe. In the primal stem of his brain, Glen is relieved not to find another person on the way down. He knows, or used to know, quite a few residents of the building who may not resemble their true selves now.

A pale leaden morning light greets him at street level, as does a bitterly cold Arctic wind that pushes at the canvas bag strung over his shoulder. Before moving forward and out through the south doorway, Glen scans everything that he can take in. Only the winds are alive, it seems. His eyes next move across a parking lot to the poor soul who was stomped out of this world for the contents of a backpack, or maybe just for the evil of the act without law constraints to impede it... an unthinkable horror. Glen walks slowly, cautiously away from the building and toward the fallen person on Sherbourne street. He is blown away by the amount of smashed windshield glass everywhere, struck by the idiocy. With the power out so emphatically and all the dire apocalypse predictions seemingly unfolded, what possible use was there for car stereos or any other item that a smash and grab thief would normally target?

The air is tainted with the harsh scent of fires that have burned unchecked. He treads carefully through little cubes of glass, across the parking lot to the fallen citizen in his sad repose. Glen is no stranger to corpses, having witnessed many a tragedy in Afghanistan, and his sense of right and wrong will not be impinged upon by any world ending free-for-all. By the time he reaches the body, his eyes are stinging with tears that rise easily. Coagulated blood coats the poor man's face. A sidewalk has never looked harsher. Glen scans the north and south vista of the street, seeing nobody else; an expanse of vandalized newspaper boxes, broken street level windows in virtually every apartment building, a thin plume of smoke issuing upward from somewhere in nearby Allan Gardens park. He bends at the knees to gently grip the fallen one's jacket, tugs firmly to pull his body into a resting place against a brick wall that acts as the parking lot perimeter. Cold temperatures have forestalled the inevitable decomposition. Glen pushes the man against the bricks, crying freely and shaking his head. Blue eyes. Vibrant even in death. Died with a wince on his face. Fuck.

"I'm so sorry, brother" he says to the corpse, and wonders again if he will be able to emotionally survive this walk to get water and hopefully find others who haven't completely lost it. There is a convenience store around the bend on Carlton street; Glen's first destination although he pre-knows what will await him there. It takes five minutes to cover the distance, his eyes watching that smoke plume from the park which seems to come from within the beautiful domed central greenhouse there. As predicted, his neighborhood variety store has been absolutely ransacked. The window glass is all over not only an adjacent sidewalk but fans out across the empty width of Carlton street. A front door has been torn out of its frame and lays like another kind of corpse in its threshold. Glen can see through the gaping window casings that the store shelves and glass doored refrigeration displays have been entirely emptied. A sign of what will be, no doubt, but he decides with resignation to make his way through the park's diagonal path to have a look at a large supermarket on Gould street. If he can obtain water and any food items without having to traverse the defiled city blocks between he and lake Ontario, that is the vastly preferred option.

Not bloody likely, though. He crosses an eerily traffic free street and passes by the smoking greenhouse dome. All of the window panes are blackened with soot. A large outdoor area that leads into the central dome has been strewn with the tropical contents within; cacti and wide banana leaf fronds, torn up exotic flowers, more shattered panes of glass. It makes him sick, the sheer wanton stupidity. There were months of this manner of vandalism in riots throughout the world during the lethal heat waves of 2012's summer. Precisely what had been worried about in advance, the unravel of a society's self control, the opportunistic inexplicable destruction of a peoples' own home turf, the scary anti-mentality of mobs... it had all manifested to a greater degree than feared, and as usual the majority of good law abiding citizenry had done almost nothing to stop it.

Glen wipes at his eyes and continues through the park. Benches have long been rooted in cement here, this being a somewhat edgy downtown place with split personality atmosphere, and they remain in their locations but now free of people. There are very high concentrations of rooming houses and homeless shelters in this part of town; he knows that the denizens are now at large without supervision, medication, food or water. This park has long been a day pass hangout and he finds it extra peculiar that this particular morning is presenting him with the entire public space, free of other human presence. Glen quickens his gait along the diagonal central pathway, feeling the ominous yet reassuring weight of his Browning pistol. Feeling emptier than he has at any point during the awful week long untethering of his city as seen and heard through walls and windows. Gerrard street is a vandalized mess of an intersection, also void of life. A Harvey's fast food joint has been destroyed utterly. Windows gone, menu panels scattered into the street, the interior apparently set fire to and left to burn. Glen is shocked at a realization that perhaps the entire inner city has been thus grimly assaulted; that hope has no place in this walk of his. On the southwest corner of the intersection, in front of another smashed to pieces glass door that fronted a shabby 24-hour convenience mart, he notices a broad puddle of blood. It seems rather recent, still a luridly bright arterial red, and is telling a tale of someone attacked and probably stabbed. Someone who fell, left for dead, then somehow arose to stagger away in a horrendous trail of sprayed droplets that meander south on Jarvis street.

Down to St.Michael's hospital, probably, in a desperate futile final act. Such mind-blowing madness in a once safe big city. Nice polite Canadians. He decides to cross west on Gerrard street's north side, then down Mutual street to Gould where a gutted supermarket no doubt awaits his stunned eyes. Though he is normally reluctant to make judgments or cast aspersions, Glen Loach cannot help but speculate as to the horror show in some American cities that come to mind... he heads south on a barren Mutual street with its row of parked and vandalized cars, and prays for the safety of his family folk in Watertown New York.

 It doesn't take very long for Glen to reach Gould street and the block wide facade of a surrealist supermarket. An entire sidewalk of shattered glass panes. Every window, tall and narrow but for the main doorway, has been boarded up with big sheets of plywood. It reminds him somewhat of storm preparations down south in the hurricane zones. A large bright red aerosol warning has been spray printed across what used to be the entrance : "Anyone attempting to enter will be HARMED". Glen stands for a moment and surmises that employees are holed up in there, living off the merchandise, though it could just as easily be a horror movie on the other side of that plywood... "clean up aisle eight" taken to new heights of low.

He pivots his gaze to take in a view of Yonge street, two blocks west and an apparent disaster zone. A row of smoke blackened storefronts and not a soul in sight... wait, there. A lone bike rider. Slowly pedalling north with his head down... Glen does not want to be seen and steps in closer to the boarded up entrance doorway. Cyclist rolls out of sight. The garish threat "will be HARMED" is emblazoned directly in front of him, and Glen kicks the plywood hard. His guts churn in hunger but mostly he craves a never-ending drink of cold clean water. "Let me IN" he shouts at the wood sheet, "I have coupons!" He spits and suddenly laughs in an ugly coarse staccato that doesn't resemble who he thinks himself to be; a clinging echo of Afghanistan and the constant fucking terror on patrols...

Oh, these civilians who know nothing of that particular peculiar knife edge of fear. The kind of blood deep fear that carbonates a soldier, police officer, prison guard, surgeon... anyone who goes to work with life and death more palpably present than is "usual". Glen Loach is certainly no robotized jarhead. He is a feeler. His youthful entrance into the armed forces came about due to a lack of connection between his wants and what was realistically available to him for a vocation. His father had been a military man, served with valor and distinction, espoused the noble virtues of a life dedicated to the idea of "country" and "peace". Glen had been a lot less interested in the human aspect, being inherently nihilistic-meets-optimistic (a paradox deluxe), and wanted to "see the world"... how many lifetimes ago was that? Here he stands now in a self-imploded city on a panicked planet with no electrical system, and how does it assist him to have witnessed death up close? To have "seen the world"? The world is now measured in urban blocks that lead to water, hopefully to a food source, but to what purpose?

He gets his boots moving away from the boarded up supermarket, southbound on a narrower street named Mutual, with a plan to travel one block west for Church street and its denser potential to provide life sustaining supplies via retail outlets and restaurants. The temperature seems to dip drastically even as what was a steady wind diminishes to a mocking whisper. Glen hoists the bag strap higher across his shoulder and begins to realize the futility of remaining in Toronto when his gut is saying "all is hopeless here". Back to his apartment in the building of woe, and then what? All the signs had been escalating throughout the summer of this year. A very low homicide average of 60 or less per annum in a city region of nearly six million, rode the fear rails and anything-goes what the fuckism into a record setting 230 killings. That had been a tiny spike compared to "Stateside's" usual killing fields. It was as if the collective All Mind of an already teetering species couldn't survive the negative anticipation of apocalypse. Then the year beginning with precisely what NASA gently (at first) warned of : higher than normal solar flare activity, although it was all part of a "natural cycle"... the initial coronal mass discharges had only slightly messed with satellite systems, interfered minimally with cell phones, and provided people in lower latitudes with some pretty aurora borealis displays.

By June the sun had become rowdier. The talking heads in the know spoke in more direct tones. The world stuttered. A tension hitherto kept under the cloak of control began to amp and ramp. That slimmest of constraints put into place to hold individuals within the confines of "law" and what is "right"; it began to slip, too. Crime waves spread like a hybrid but inevitable cancer, beginning with the predictable places where people have less, through the mass media where responsibility and discretion is a mythic smokescreen, then up through the pecking order into that rarified air where the controllers and "haves" exist. Bilderberg group's 2012 meeting was a particularly secretive one. World policy making was under threat from a nemesis of no conscious imperative. The profiteering and continued manipulation of billions of tiny little components, all walking around with their heads full of wants and dreams and embedded ideas about personal freedom, could not proceed if a life giving star was going to snuff out life.

Glen has to stop for a moment, halfway to Shuter street. His stomach is processing the kidney beans with acidic pain, flexing gas, and he feels quite suddenly ill and hopeless. In his mind so fixed upon turmoil and the fallacy of attempting to survive, he is both cursed by and grateful for those children and grandchildren on lake Ontario's far shore. They will keep him striving. Glen isn't very adept at lying to himself. He knows that the darkness of these thoughts would hold no territory for long, if his Pauline... he squelches the train and begins walking again. At Shuter he turns right, then crosses a normally hectic Dundas street. Nobody else in sight, thankfully, but the morning light is young. Every storefront, it seems, has been relieved of its window glass. He passes used electronics shops that have no stock remaining. The irony tastes better than kidney beans. At a southeast corner where Church street intersects, Glen steps over a small mound of glass shards and sees a bright red sofa in the middle of four empty lanes. The back of it faces him from a few hundred feet distant. He wants to cackle again. At the sheer madness of this shit. The artistic dark manifestation of chaos. The so fragile structure of organized mass-living upon these ancient Ontario acres that for tens of thousands of years provided "home" to various indigenous tribes.

Glen leaves this glass littered sidewalk and begins toward the red sofa, strolling on the white middle line of Church street which is aptly named for these many fine old buildings erected for worship. Here between Dundas and Shuter, every building facade has been marred, some of them firebug charred. It makes him sad beyond healing, to see how widespread and idiotic was the destruction. Somewhere down in the aural mix of diminishing winds and his footfalls, Glen hears a low human moan that floats up from the sofa. When he arrives to see an elderly man curled in a fetal position, face to the backrest cushion, it isn't surprising to also note a blood soaked jacket beneath the self-hugging quivering arms. The poor wretch is rake thin, an evident street person who looks vaguely familiar, and he moans again through chattering teeth, eyelids clamped shut against what must be horrible agony. There are multiple stab openings in the coat fabric. Red cushions, three of them wide, are redundantly colored by what looks to be most of the victim's blood. Glen asks "can you hear me?"

Another low and plaintive moan. Glen sets down the bag and gently grips a bony shoulder. "Can you hear me, sir?" Winds pick up volume as if to mock the question, block the answer, and they are colder toothier winds. The victim's eyelids flutter, open briefly, then wince shut tighter than before, but he mutters into the cushion - "kept, kept, kept stabbing me"... Glen asks "who did this to you?" and his query is overlapped by "he kept on stabbing, no reason". Death is near if the copious blood loss is any indication. Glen firmly but slowly uses his grip on the man's shoulder to turn him onto his back, trying to ignore the sharp intake of breath and a rattling "paaahhhh"... dozens of knife holes from lower belly to collarbone where the unzipped jacket falls open. "What the hell is keeping you alive?" Glen asks, and just then his eyes fall involuntarily across the tall steeple of St. Michael's cathedral. Its ornate needle juts up at the grey moving clouds and a first snowflake hits him on his cheek. Cold and he wants to think, beautiful, but cannot.

"Pleeeeease" moans the red sofa victim. Glen turns his attention back to the now open pale blue eyes, filled with the evidence of a pain beyond tolerance. He moves the man's arms apart, one falling down limp to brush knuckles with asphalt, and sees just how badly this tragic victim has been attacked. Lifts a bright red t-shirt with a heavy exhale, hears the new whisper of "don't leave me like this"... the snow begins to come down then, but in unusual clumps of compound flakes that are very large and clinging together as they drop. That wind is suddenly no more. The would-be magical flakes, were this any other scenario, drift down in a silent magnificent mockery to kiss the dying man's upturned face. Where is God, now? As Glen's tears flowed on the cold curb of Sherbourne street not long ago, this time he wants to collapse into weeping but not one drop of crying comes forth. He does his best to lock eyes with the other pale blues, though he can only guess at what is happening behind them.

That cushion beneath the victim's feet is less blood soaked. Glen pulls at a far corner to tug it free, rotates the square so that both his hands hold bloodless corners. The big ludicrous fairy tale snowflakes drift on down, packed together but separated with more space than usual snowfalls, each one a uniquely breathtaking fractal component of an improbably magnificent world out in the inky nowhere. Many would dare suggest that God is in the works, but Glen isn't having it. He watches them land and instantly begin to melt on an old man's face, hoping that however briefly there is a cessation of pain. "I'm sorry that this has happened to you" Glen tells him. "Close your eyes." The wrinkled eyelids flutter and then obey before two strong hands place a cushion down firmly, pressing hard with palms flat. Instinctive struggle ensues but the man is so depleted that his flailing limbs fall still within a half minute's heartbreak. Glen holds the cushion in place for a long surreal span, watching compound white flakes of incredible detail landing with a soundless cling to the red cloth fabric. He thinks to look up, around, lets go of the cushion. Nary a soul in sight. Is God watching? Has Glen Loach done a merciful deed? Does God save up his apologies for that hoped for meeting at the pearly gates? Divine apologies for the necessity of this compulsory learning experience as a mortal being who remembers Immortal Being? Remembers or thirsts for it.

This thought next reminds him of something else entirely. Glen tilts his face to the morning's pale characterless sky and opens a parched mouth to let the snow enter. For a forever he stands there next to the preposterous red sofa with its corpse; his tongue out, face up, letting Life, or "God", or the sheer indifference of happenstance, put something back into his rapidly emptying reserves. "To the lake, then" he says. His voice has never sounded stranger or more disembodied, but his tongue is cold tingling happy. Glen picks up the bag to re-sling it over a shoulder, peers at the tall steeple with its oversized cross, and mumbles "amen."

After using a red sofa cushion to snuff out the suffering of a stabbing victim, it would stand to reason that the weight of a heart will increase. Glen Loach makes his way on Church street and decides to turn left and then east at Shuter. He can't handle the potential for more bizarre and tragic, which a main street like Church may certainly provide in this post-apocalypse unravel. Acrid smoke taints the air, all the more jarring for the gently falling gigantic snowflakes with their not unpleasant way of hushing sound. Glen's feet feel ten pounds heavier. His stomach ties tighter knots. Cold snow kisses hit his face and linger in the thick whitened whiskers above his mouth. Walking east and planning to use Britain lane for access back to lower Sherbourne, he becomes aware of the brewing rage that is helping to knot his guts. It wouldn't take much, not much at all, for Glen to fire a couple of rounds into the skull of whoever stabbed that poor man.

How can the right/wrong divide be such a variable? For one person, an impregnable wall. For another, one with something awry in his heart, an easy step into the primal and selfish. These takers can justify their methods and leave a stain on their world. Where is the mighty hand to smite them? Why does "good" speak in hushed tones compared to "evil", the ugliest shout? Glen walks and wants to drown out the ugly shout with a song. A bullet's song. He has felt this way before, after losing good people to improvised explosive devices buried in the godforsaken sands where civilians are have-nots and far too many young men have an excess of time and anger on their hands... Glen Loach has a deep unhealed wound in his fabric. He can summon the sting of observational madness, as a memory reliving itself in a broken Toronto morning, and it is here precisely what he felt when watching the sun rise in Afghanistan. With the taste of coffee still strong in his mouth when a young father from Alberta was blown apart by a makeshift weapon cowardly buried in a road at the head of their dawn patrol. One minute spent in quiet awe of a brutally beautiful horizon under early light, Venus and stars still a'twinkle. A subsequent minute watching the futility of medics attempting to stave off the grim reaper.

A question, "what the fuck are we doing here?", resonated then and resonates now. Glen angles through a large empty parking lot toward Queen street, barely "present". It is a miracle at all that people give of themselves, want to become close to others, to love them and be loved in return, because goodbyes are never predictable and can be the deepest wounds of all. Goodbyes can kill. What if a young wife and mother accompanied her husband to the station, dreading her intuition but giving off supportive energy for the man she loves as he heads across an ocean to do his job? What if she knows, inexplicably knows, that he won't be coming home alive? How long will she suffer for that quiet strength and the words not spoken? The cold "what the fuck are we doing here?" Glen reaches Britain lane but his thoughts are distinctly elsewhere, chasing each other, colliding, competing with how poorly his body feels. More storefronts along Queen street have been violated and destroyed. Black smoke still billows up to meet the pretty snowflakes. What a madness, this world. What an impossible paradox. It seems to come down to the life of a moment. One breath, one eye blink, one perception filtered to the best abilities of one person who wants to believe in individuality and yet takes solace in not being alone. What a madness. Always with the teaching taunt of beauty. He sighs the sigh of a mind without words.

A corner shop that has long sold oriental carpets, with a "going out of business sale" sign in the door for ten years, meets the exhausted eyes of Glen Loach. Front window; shards. Sidewalk; a sloppy mound of assorted rugs, some of them burned. At first he doesn't see the rolled up one, nor the small bare ankle and foot protruding from an end. His reflexes lurch, spark, readjust...mannequin. He places a heel on the carpet and pushes hard enough for it to unroll a little. The single leg becomes exposed and at the upper portion he sees that the "thigh" is coated in what appears to be dried blood. Someone, some it pretending to be human, has apparently used the appendage as a weapon. Can it sink any lower this morning? Loach lifts his face to accept more snow on tongue moments. The lake is less than forty five minutes away but it may as well be Antarctica.

He tears himself away from that sad sidewalk, walks a partial block south and then turns left at Britain street, which is mostly a little known warehouse lane from the Victorian era. Real estate speculators have been attempting to "revitalize" (translation : harvest money from) its narrow expanse via loft lifestyle pimping, but buyers are leery of the urban roughness of what exists all around. It is a section of downtown long reserved for the homeless shelters, addiction treatment centres, dollar stores and rock bottom price drinking holes. Glen walks one more short block then turns right on Sherbourne. Nobody in sight. The two blocks leading to Adelaide street are made up of gleaming new towers and high end storefronts, now smashed to 2012 smithereens. Glass is everywhere. Near Richmond street, one of Glen's favorite shops where period lighting is sold, has been thoroughly ransacked. He stops to look sadly through a wide open front window. Everything inside has been either stolen or destroyed. He thinks of the nice lady who owns the place, of her wealth but equal passion for beautiful antique lighting, and it all feels so hopeless now. Ornate gas lamps that were handcrafted with a love for detail and beauty, that lasted well over a century, reduced to the symbolic rubble of a species.

"Heyyy" comes a male voice from across Sherbourne, making Glen's blood jump. He spins to face three youngish men in oversized parkas, one of which has a price tag dangling from its sleeve. Bangers from nearby Moss Park, he guesses. They stand shoulder to shoulder in front of what used to be a Tim Hortons coffee shop, now a smashed open remnant of arson. Glen's eyes scan the unfriendly appraising faces, then stop on the middle one, much taller than his cohorts and audaciously visible in a right hand... a long wide blade. (it couldn't be, could it?) "We're looking for smokes" says the middle face with a chin nod at what must appear to be easy pickings across the street. "Got cigarettes on you?" He breaks their standstill with a step and they all three fall into place, crossing an empty intersection where one way traffic usually hurtles by between the light changes.

Fear isn't a part of Glen's mathematics. He holds his ground and calmly watches them approach, dividing thirteen Browning rounds by three potential thugs, knowing he will not hesitate if this comes to that. He says to the middle guy when the group are in the centre of Richmond street - "Sorry, I don't smoke." On the right, a shorter man with his hair in corn rows says "don't matter, maybe you got something else for us". No sense playing with these three, Glen unzips his jacket and reaches into a side pocket to grip the pistol. The three stop at his movement, perhaps ten feet away, their street sense at odds with how this older white dude looks. Glen looks from the eyes of all three down to the big chef's knife. Snowflakes drift down peacefully to land and melt on the identical dark blue parkas. Everything feels absurdly surreal, but within this feeling there is a deep opening of bliss; nothing matters the way it once did, but a corpse of someone stabbed repeatedly, red blood soaking a red sofa; that matters.

"You boys seen any red sofas lately?" he asks the hard eyes of the tall man holding a knife. Their foreheads furrow, two pair of eyes on each end glance toward the middle pair, and tall guy says "wha fuck, you talkin' about?" Glen knows this isn't the stabber, these aren't the monsters, but he steps one foot back toward the window casement behind him and shows a hand filled with a firearm that he is well trained to use. He isn't some street puke pumped with an empty bravado and a willingness to disregard the preciousness of life in order to gain "respect" with his fucked up tribe. The sight of Glen's unwavering hand, holding a tool of quick death delivery, should be enough. He slowly flicks the safety off, fighting to contain a surge of rage that he recognizes as directionless. "Don't say a single word more, none of you" he instructs, then aims his attention at mister blade. "You, drop that knife right there." For a second he is met with defiance, but it is a front. "You not be using that, bitch, feel me?" Glen lowers the barrel and fires a round into the asphalt directly in front of all three. Before its report has finished rebounding from the glass faced canyon of Sherbourne street, they are in a record breaking sprint mode heading in three separate directions.

He watches them flee, parkas billowing wildly as they vanish into big wet compound snowflakes, then looks at the little crater where the bullet impacted. "They're fucking lucky" he whispers, replacing the safety catch, slowly returning his weapon to its pocket. The knife is a brand new one; a Henckel Five Star probably stolen from the restaurant supplier down on King street. Glen walks over, picks the blade up, turns to throw it in a high wide arc so that it lands on the roof of a desecrated antique lighting store. "They're so lucky" he repeats, with sudden thoughts of his father. Dad would have put a round into that forehead, dead middle. The man walked around embodying a clarity of wrong and right that wasn't always "right", but the younger Glen envied it. Dad had served in the "great wars", and like the famous general Patton, he believed himself a continually reincarnated warrior from eras and battlefields through time; personally chosen to be a soldier even if he didn't mean it to say "chosen by God". Glen senior (and yes there are some observations to be made about those who name their progeny with the same letters) was not a religion buyer. He had seen too much atrocity and insanity to accept a loving Creator capable of non interference when the children are tearing each other asunder. No, Glen senior believed in right and wrong, and in himself.

Southbound on Sherbourne street through the slow drop of fat snow, those banshee winds long gone now, Glen Loach peers around at thousands of windows above him and sees no faces there. Streets normally filled with parked vehicles are almost devoid; a mass exodus from downtown must have occurred during the initial rioting and stupidity. He can't help but wonder about the state of humanity all around this world, today, this morning, with the power not coming back on and chaos supreme. All of the technological conveniences failing or taken away permanently. The potential for malfunction and mania, perhaps even a nuclear warhead being launched for any number of "reasons", all of it feeling like a bottomless pit. Again he boils it down to family. He must find and be with his children and their children, even if what he finds there is no longer alive. Of the countless times where Glen suffered the emptiness of no longer having Pauline with him, at least in the mortal empirical way, this peculiar morning is bringing the keenest aches. He readjusts his shoulder load and picks up tempo, no longer thinking about food or water, but the lake. Just the lake.

The incident with three would-be predators has left Glen depleted on the brink of coping. Anvils for feet. A gaping yaw of a gut. He plunks down one foot in front of the other, inward gone. How did we go from rich Ontario soil and forest flooring to this morass of cement mixer vomit? Heel. Thud. Heave a breath. Feel that peculiar draining of a plan. Away it goes. Where is the wormhole entry, so he can pull himself back just far enough for a restart? Where is all the BEauty that he chased, embraced, retraced? Heel thudding his emptying willpower south to water, he can't summon beauty's memory. It is easy to believe that ALL of the lifetime workings of his alleged "self as mind" have been a smokescreen inside the tool kit of Nature and its preprogrammed "reproduce" instructions. In other words, his best lifetime's work was his children, and so on. Like the colony ant. Like the stubborn little shrimp who live in the deepest hottest ocean vents, resisting impossible odds in order to do what Life says must be done. These are the reductionist thoughts that tighten their repetition loop in Glen's skull as he treads beyond wearily, no longer attuned to what surrounds him.

In the morning light of the mourning light, Loach does what people do very well : he regrets. The maddening thing about it? It is a bland exhausted all encompassing regret without specifics. There are few feelings more troubling than the ones that refuse and resist definition. "Maybe that is where we fail" he speaks to his shuffling feet. In his head the disembodied All-Voice finishes off this observation : we waste too much of our energy in the pursuit of definition. "Just do the fucking job" had been a personal mantra to get him through his soldiering duties. No detail delving and absolutely no seeking the logic behind strategies, orders, political motives. It was a sure detour into madness. At Adelaide and Sherbourne streets, Glen stops for a quick westward surveying : a belch of black cloud rises up from the distant cluster of bank/money/sky towers. Scratch a citizen, find an anarchist. Well, people, you've got supreme anarchy now. From the sun on down.

Glen's crusted eyeballs take in the smoke pillar as it spirals up over emptied streets, and he thinks of all the billions spent on chasing a Higgs particle. "The God particle"... his head turns back to Sherbourne and a now visible lake, followed by his renewed exhausted gait. He can remember being with his wife and kids, camping on a narrow peninsula, enjoying the crackle and sight of a bonfire trance. His mind at the time had been idling, happily empty of focus. Life was a hug in those simple moments. That, was "God". To feel as deeply intrinsic and connected as any towering Oak. To finally and truly relax. For two more blocks, now sloping more noticeably as lake Ontario nears, Glen fixates on the remembered feelings that medicate him best. He is walking out of his life. This is what it is now. He is replacing the physical pain of a body with a sustaining and welcoming revelation. He pictures his years up until this pivotal morning as a relay race. The baton has been handed off to his children. They are strong runners. There is no finish line. Even if the entire societal structure of Earth becomes irrevocably wiped away, it was a natural event and therefore a happenstance beyond question.

After a harrowing beginning to this trek, Glen is subsequently granted a people-less remainder. Yes, there are more smashed storefronts and overturned vehicles along the way. Yes, the air is tainted with the stench of burned wood and wire. But no, there are no more confrontations with the dark side. Perhaps his mind with all of its powerful influencing potential has actually wrought change upon the surroundings. The finding of peace inside his breaking down body is writing the story's final paragraphs. He walks beneath the corroding belly of a Gardiner Expressway no longer in need of tearing down because everything has changed. He comes out the other side of its wide shadow at the top of an expanse of acreage no longer in need of billions of dollars in development for the Pan Am Games of 2015, because that year has been cancelled. He sucks his lungs full of cold air where the snow no longer drifts down, and heads across the barren lanes of Queens Quay toward Cherry Street and Toronto's old port lands.

It is normally a twenty minute walk from the top of Cherry street to the beach named after it. Glen Loach covers this expanse without awareness of its details, for his mind is locked upon a campfire, a pup tent with his kids reading comic books by lantern light, a silent but intensely passionate session of lovemaking with Pauline not long after that light is doused, the parental tent nearby and miles away. The regret vagueness has vanished now. There is a wonderful sensation of treading upon meant ground. Meant. Like reading and acting a favorite script, but really choosing it this time around. He crosses the rusted skeleton of an old iron drawbridge without even seeing it, his right hand sliding along the cold handrail. There, at last and suddenly, is Cherry Beach in its lonely grace. He looks into the thick copse of trees to the east, where picnic tables and fire pits have long given city folk a getaway feeling. Not a soul in sight. This is where Glen turns to walk, angling himself over the partially frozen sand beds so that he can stroll beside the grey gentle chop of lake water.

He has his back to the city skyline, and it seems fitting. Down here it smells fresh and distant. Ancient and unpolluted by the touch of humanity. He walks with the soles of his footwear in water, a soft ice cold slosh. The bulk within his jacket summons a touch of fingers to the pistol grip. So familiar. It no longer reassures or sends any one feeling. Just another invention of a species lost to insanity. Lost in its own reflection. Has there ever been, in the uncountable stars with all of their solar systems, a creature with more spiritual potential unrealized? It feels like a dark query, but no... Glen thinks now that every catastrophic natural event is a part of the growth. It is no different than the roots of trees or upturned faces of flowers, seeking Life and nothing more or less. Glen walks along a gentle arc of shoreline and then looks up to see an empty boat. It is about eight feet long, red wood planks blistered and peeling, with two oars a dangle and also a small Evinrude motor affixed, its blades buried in wet sand.

Clearly, it was left there just for him. This is how it feels. Without any hesitation he lifts and pushes at its stern to free the blades, then steps over and into the empty rib cage. No items of interest other than the oars in their loops. With a big exhale, Glen lowers himself into position, takes up the oars, and begins to slowly row away from the shore. The heft of them feels just right in his hands. Weariness and hunger melt away, but the reminder of a vicious thirst returns as he moves a dozen yards out into the water. He stops rowing, releases the handles. He manoeuvres to retrieve the jug. Gives it a generous dip into the icy coldness. For long throat exploding seconds does he swallow back the lake. Little bursts of pleasure-pain pierce at his temples. "Aaaaaa" he says. "Aaaaa", and renews drinking deeply. Three days to animal? If this is animalistic pleasure, he welcomes it fully. No defining or explaining. Just need and its quenching moment.

Sated for now, Glen dips the jug again until it is half filled. He tightens the cap and tosses it onto the old wooden planks near his feet. He feels a dizzying rush of vigor, even if it makes a promise it can't keep for long, and decides to try the old motor. It takes a dozen good pulls before sputtering reluctantly to life with a belch of gas stink. His nostrils fill and flare with more nostalgia. Cottage country, marine fuel, suntan lotion, burgers on a charcoal grill, ice cold beer. "Aaaaaa" for the third time, and he takes up the oars into the boat in favor of a less demanding propulsion. He cannot recall a time when lake Ontario was this void of other boats or people. Surreality abounds as he guides the Evinrude and its payload out of the Cherry Beach area, west and then north around the perimeter of a Leslie street landfill peninsula literally gone to the birds. It is much colder out on the water as he slips away into its deeper regions, and then as he motors away his eyes find Toronto's skyline for one last time. Smoke pillars spiral up from several locations. All is dead and deathly still. The sky is an uncaring cloak of grey now, with no precipitation. The city seems to shape shift as he places distance between the boat stern and those ever familiar buildings. He will have approximately thirty miles to traverse before finding New York state beneath the bow of his unexpected gift of a boat.

After a time. After an after of time. Indeterminable and lulled by the noisy cadence of outboard motor, wave slap on wood, and a not gentle inertia across the lake's face, Glen wakes up to fading afternoon light. The motor is silent, without a fragrance of fuel, and only chopping waves with toothy white caps make sound against the hull. His eyes are slow to focus and he has been slumped sideways, judging by the pain across his ribs. He doesn't remember falling asleep, thinking of anything en route to it, or waking and sitting up straight to be startled by completely alien surroundings, all water no horizon. He swivels his head around to seek something out there that will place him. He can't find Toronto but it is snowing again, this time a quicker angular tempo with much smaller flakes. More like pellets, really. Something about this three hundred and sixty degree vista seems very appropriate to End Times. A man alone in an old boat, probably in the middle of lake Ontario with nightfall and winter temperatures closing in. He moves around on the bench, shivers a little, and decides that he is going to be sick. It isn't a choice, really, but an acceptance of what his stomach is announcing. With a lurching motion he bends himself over the side and yacks weakly. Bile and bubbles.

Whilst bent there his eyes catch a swooping hand painted script, rather upside down but the word unmistakable in its sky blue color.

He could ask a person, if he had another with him, "have you ever acted immediately on an impulse so strong and sure that you dare not falter to question it?" If that other person were indeed with him, Glen's next action would surely interrupt any answer being offered. He lifts himself, spits once into the wave chop, and retrieves the Browning from his jacket. With no hesitation whatsoever does he fire the twelve round remnant of its clip into the boat bottom around his feet. A dozen flat reports that clap out across the great bowl of lake. Glen bites his bottom lip in a sudden fit of almost glee, and tosses the firearm overboard with a gentle lob. Minus a heaving sigh to summarize all the sighs of his storied lifetime, Glen Loach sits himself down between bench rows into the curvature of hull where ice cold water begins to replace open air. He leans to one side, against the sore ribs, pleasantly indifferent and free of any particular thought. Guided, he supposes, and finally at the conclusion of this particular chapter. His heavy eyelids win out, and he no longer cares to watch the snow pellet and wind show. He merely wonders how long it will take for "Pauline" to sink.

[rjmorrisonuniverse-blog]

Nolan and the One-Hook Day

1. NOLAN

 What a shit storm of a day.

Distilled angst, chain of events, cosmic joke funnel, harpoon of the gods.

I know as I sit near him that I will have to throw the best punch I have ever thrown; one with technique and violent finality. I'll have to lift up from the chair, slide it back as I tell him "I'm going for a piss", and deliver the perfect right hook that begins from my heel and gains muscle torque up the calf, thigh and buttocks. I'll pivot with it as I rise and all my years of practice should unconsciously find that sweet spot on his jawline. I have to throw for a kill.

One chance or else big trouble.

Even I know that you don't get into punch-ups with massive off-duty cops.

One knockout hook, and an expedient exit through the side door on the far end of that pool table. It has to be soon, before the after work crowd shows up and this shit-hole becomes witness city. Before the pork behemoth gets even nastier and I run out of time. You bet your ass the pig reference is intended; this guy has the face of a swine. Mammoth jarhead on a stump neck with beady red rimmed eyes and nose vascularity that bespeaks years of hard drink. His voice is gravel, whisky phlegm and flat hard, and his salt and pepper goatee has an ugly way of framing an unsmiling mouth.

Motherfucking pig, prick, douchebag.

 I guess we should backtrack some. My name is Nolan. You don't need the surname, so get over it right now. I work for a metal stamping plant, and we make mostly automobile fenders. The job pays well but the environment is a hell on earth; a gargantuan space lit by low sodium lamps that hang forty feet above the floor. Two-storey tall machines that thump and roar like monsters starved for metal and perhaps human flesh, and a long shift there with earplugs inserted and legs taking shock after shock wave is about as otherworldly a job as I've ever had.

Is it any wonder I amped up my mixed martial arts training and aimed at the UFC?

Lunch breaks at A.G. Simpson were hilarious, as the zombies filed into the cafeteria in various states of exhaustion, depression, hangover, debt, disillusion. Even there, with the long bank of windows that overlooked the main work area below, the fucking lighting was brutal. In your face harshness, bad food, a sickly mint green high gloss paint on the cinder block walls... I mean, no amount of overtime could justify my being there and ONLY there to make ends meet. I remember a painting crew that was hired to spray the ceilings and recoat the washrooms, and those guys were freaked OUT by the vibe. They took their breaks in the cafeteria too, cursing themselves for not bringing their own food to the job, bitching about the watery vending machine coffee, and more than a dozen times asking us "how the fuck do you stand working here?"

So, given my size and mindset coupled with a love for man-to-man conflict resolution, it was a no-brainer for me to embark on a little side action in the octagon. I started as a gangly kid with the amateur boxing and proved a quick study with natural power in each hand. Even with the headgear and twelve ounce gloves I was knocking people out cold, and sparring partners too. I always seemed to have that mean in me, but as lady luck, that rotten bitch, would have it... I was a "cutter". If I didn't knock his ass out in the first couple of rounds, sooner or later I'd be bleeding. Bottom lip, bridge of nose, and for a brief stint in the pro circuit, both eyelids. I was an undefeated slugger fighting out of a loser gym, punching for power and lantern jawed, but that goddamned skin of mine  pushed me toward MMA combat, and that was fine by me. I didn't like my fellow man as a rule, and most days, hitting him made more sense than conversation.

I started out lucky, through a cousin who was being trained in the Pat Miletich camp, and found myself under the tutelage of the great man himself. I could list details about the intensive training that mixed kickboxing and Jiu-jitsu, Pat's karate methods and a stripped down version of Thai boxing that seemed best suited to my power... I could talk about the first dozen fights in Iowa, all victories by knockout in the first round.

I was busting my hump at the metal stamping plant all day, training five nights a week, and taking fights for shit money anywhere they would put me. Eventually I was given an opportunity to match up against a name opponent, even though his career was on the downward spiral, and representatives from the UFC were ringside. That was one motherfucker of a highlight reel knockout, let me tell it. My six foot four two hundred fifty pound hammer was primed to drop and I don't mind saying that poor bastard was knocked out during the stare down. Stoked? Homicidal.

The first thing he attempted was a leg kick, and in missing, he presented me with a clean shot at his mandible. I saw his eyes go all wide and wild just as I uncorked a sweet left uppercut and felt that indescribable delicious shock of connection when it exploded on the sleep spot under his chin. He was out before his head bounced off the canvas, and even today the debate continues about what killed him; the punch or that heavy landing. My celebrations ended when I saw that he wasn't getting up, and by the time the stretcher arrived I knew it was serious. I won't lie to you. I won't say it chewed me up inside that my opponent died a week later. These are gladiators and they go into it fully aware of the dangers. Highly skilled, trained to the nth degree, all it takes between two combatants in that arena is a nanosecond of error and somebody's lights go out.

Permanent injury, career ending injury? Not common, but I wasn't a common hitter either. Maybe we can thank my father for that. Every opponent wore his face and I don't throw to win. I throw to injure.

I was told that a contract was being drawn up for me in the aftermath of that fight; that all the way up to Dana White's office, the name "Nolan" was being spoken as the next money magnet. Then that poor bitch died and the contract offer was postponed until the media hornets nest died, too. I was pissed, maybe even a little at myself, and for sure at the man whose physically abusive ways had forged the fires that shaped me.

Two weeks later, I busted up one of Miletich's top young prospects during a heated sparring exchange, and that was the end of my UFC dream. Back to the zombie show at A.G. Simpson I went, and no amount of prying from fellow workers would get me to talk about just how close I had come to fame and financial freedom. Fuck it, fuck them, and fuck dreams. That became my mantra, and I withdrew into a mean sonofabitch's shell. Nobody messed with me back then.

Well, not until I took on that part time gig as a bouncer at Bunny's strip club. That was where I met Sherry-Ann.

  2. SHERRY-ANN

  Here in the bottom of the barrel tavern, I motion to the waiter for two more pints and listen to the gravelly voice of the big prick sitting at the corner of the table. He's talking about his failed marriages, the failings of the judicial system, the failure of society to appreciate what he does for a living. Failure? I'll show the motherfucker failure. Then, as the waiter sets down two more pints, I hear off-duty pig's speech beginning to slur.

"You shoulda been a cop". He fixes his cold eyes on me, looking at my down-to-the-wood hairstyle and clean cut features. He's bitching about the career path and in his next beery breath he's pitching a sale.

"My woman wouldn't have anything to do with me if I was a cop", I tell his stump of a face while Sherry-Ann drops the needle down on some distant memory that plays a song of sex and rage. Pig-mug leers into his ale, and I glance down at the broad knuckles across my right hand, square and knobby and designed for pain delivery. I had been forming a fist as he bitched about his marriages, and now I force myself to flatten out the fingers on my thigh.

 You may have thought that Sherry-Ann was a stripper, based on my mention of the club where I watched the door and floor. Nothing against the girls inside who worked the laps for money, but I would never date a peeler. I fucked a couple of them when I first took the job because they were practically throwing it at me. These all-American clean cut features of mine would have been enough, but toss in some nasty scar tissue and my indifferent conduct, and it was shooting fish in a barrel time. I don't pretend to understand the mind of a woman, but there is a fundamental truth about their being attracted to rough men. They may not love us in a lasting way, but a lot of them want us between their legs.

My first weekend on the job, on the Saturday shift, this feature dancer "Savannah" kept taking her breaks in the entrance lobby, near the door and near me. Nothing wrong with my meat radar, and I knew where the harpoon was headed. This joint, "Bunny's", was a rough place in a nasty part of southside downtown. Blood spatter on the sidewalk out front was common, and in time a lot of it was extracted by yours truly in the doing of his job; I always thought it funny how these down and out motherfuckers could find money for beer and lap dances. How many of them had wives and hungry children at home?

Some of them came in looking for trouble, pissed off at the world, and I took pleasure when reducing their dietary needs to soup. The owner of the place didn't give a shit how we did our duty, as long as the money came in and the cops stayed away and the girls were kept happy. So, when Savannah finished her final three song set of the night, instead of taking private dance requests she asked me if I would join her for a drink. Rose, the owner, cleared it with "Night's almost over... long as you keep an eye on the room."

Savannah and I shared a small table near the entrance door, and she did most of the talking while I admired her rack and scanned the patrons. Her body language was nothing less than a carnal invitation, with those shapely legs spread and her hand coming up often to touch my bicep, forearm, knee. A vacant, giggling, augmented and needy blonde caricature.

Shift finished, I invited her back to my two-bedroom apartment for a few more drinks and some good hard fucking, but on the way out the back door I first saw Sherry-Ann and she laid a burn job on my mind. She was leaning forward to talk to a potential client through the driver side window, and I caught sight of long-honed legs flowing up into a tightly rounded naked ass calling to me beneath her hiked black skirt. Statuesque, easily six feet without the twat-for-sale boots, and when she heard the back door squeal open and slam shut she turned for a second to shoot me and my companion a hard appraising look. The street lamp threw a sleazy orb over her beautiful features, with that young Margot Kidder sneer, too much lipstick and tumbling waves of ludicrous wig-red tresses tickling the mid back.

Untamed; that was the immediate impression. Lanky and dangerous and maybe a little crazy, and the kind of bedroom ride that was sure to be a roller coaster. We experienced that intense time-stand-still-eye-lock and I felt the kinetic energy between us that stayed with me all through the next two hours of sex with Savannah. That final climax, doggie style with her face pushed into the back of my sofa and her hands braced against the wall... that was another woman's bird I was basting. A woman I was determined to meet at the next opportunity. I remember drama-Savannah's look of injury when I handed her cab fare at four in the morning and bluntly told her I needed to sleep alone. She tried to protest and I gave it to her straight - "We both got what we wanted tonight, and now it's time for you to piss off."

 "You really shoulda been a cop, I'm telling you."

I nod as if in agreement, look at the clock above the bar and realize that I'll have to do my thing soon. Sherry-Ann will be expecting me home from work, completely unaware that my day is an official shit-storm only beginning to hit the fan. The huge man sitting with me lifts the pint of ale to his mouth, still glaring my way over the rim, and I see his police-issue service revolver sitting snugly in its shoulder holster. The open front of his brown suede jacket, the bulging stomach, massive arms barely contained by sleeves, and a pungent body odor of sickening complexity.

This doomed fuck doesn't have a clue that I followed him here.

3. PARENTING

  A week after I first laid eyes on Sherry-Ann's lanky goods, I was on duty at Bunny's with a sense of excitement that I hadn't felt in a long time. The shift was uneventful, and when I went through the back door, there she was at the end of the block with another chick. I thought about walking over to her, but decided to roll up in my Grand National. It was a hot night and she was sweetly tucked into a pair of high-riding denim shorts and a tight red t-shirt with black boots at the mid-calf; straight platinum blonde wig. I saw her eyes move from her companion as I rode up slowly, window down.

What a fucking body. Built for cock of Nolan. I can't explain the power of the attraction, and I had never considered paying for sex even once in my life. She just had that sneer, defiance, youthful strut and a physique to match. I'll admit that I had a soft spot for the ladies of the night, because my mother had been one, and I hate on pimps and everything they represent. Sure, I had some Travis Bickle in me, and Sherry-Ann was my Jodie Foster.

"Looking for a date?" her upper lip curled at the corner, and then I could see her remembering me from the weekend before. She smiled as I stopped, and her girlfriend took a long look through the windshield before casually strolling around the corner out of sight. "Hey, I remember you, stud."

Long story short, we did a little negotiating and she got in the car. I drove around the block and parked in behind Bunny's near the fire escape and garbage bins. Very romantic. Turned out that Sherry-Ann was new to this stroll, and didn't fuck. She was oral only, and I had to wear a jimmy hat Her old man was a biker-type who also had a piece of the action in the very club where I worked; a few girls who took on after hours customers at his command. He'd taken a shine to his newest meat, and didn't want Sherry-Ann riding any cock but his. I was as stiff as a fucking girder when she started stroking me through the dress slacks, but when I tried to enjoy her tits she moved my hand away gently, bending to unzip me and set the crowbar free. As soon as she started rolling that goddamned rubber over the head I could feel myself losing the erection.

"This isn't how I want it" I told her flatly, and she froze, raised herself back up and looked me long in the eyes. I remember thinking that I knew her from somewhere, maybe another life, and for the first time in my thirty four years I felt that I wanted something intensely. Her. "I wouldn't mind grabbing a coffee somewhere for half an hour, for the same money, if that's cool."

We started that way, and for weeks I would take her to a seedy twenty four hour diner near her stroll, to learn about her life and tell her about mine. Both of us were survivors of violent childhoods, but her father was nothing compared to the evil piece of shit that was mine. Her dad was heavy into the booze, gambling, and spousal abuse. My father was the angriest most self-entitled rage-aholic in existence, and from my first childhood memories it was his fists that marked my growth.

That prick verbally abused my mother and took sadistic pleasure in kicking the shit out of his only child. As I grew into a large teenager, the beatings escalated in duration and ferocity. He never told me why he hated me, but I knew instinctively that my life had been an accident... a miserable wait around that cocksucker's reality. As Sherry-Ann and I shared these sad stories over coffee, we could feel a mutual caring develop between us, and I always had that sexual hunger for her.

In time, she trusted me enough to explain that she wanted to get away from "Roy", who was becoming increasingly demanding and violent. He'd brought in another girl from the bus terminal, and that was his new top bitch. Sherry-Ann had to start earning like the other girls, and when she told me that, I took care of the situation for her. I spent a couple of weeks in hiding, watching for this fucker, and quickly enough I was able to figure out his schedule. He'd roll around just after the sun went down, in a beat up blue panel van, and again after three in the morning to collect the pussy rent... I waited for the Thursday of the third week, told Sherry-Ann exactly what I planned to do, ignored her warnings and pleas, and when Roy showed up later that night for his money...

Nolan came out of the shadows across the street. Roy was in the driver's seat, window down, in conversation with one of the other girls and I casually walked around the back of the van to push his bitch out of the way with my right hand before looping a short left hook into the center of his face; it had brutal follow-through and Roy's head whiplashed before he hit the bench seat sideways. Two of the girls started running away, but Sherry-Ann stayed for the show. I yanked open the door and grabbed a generous handful of beard and long hair, pulled the semi-conscious Roy back to a sitting position. The blood was cascading out of what remained of his nose, down his shirt and vest, all over the money he had dropped into his lap. I gave him a good shake and his eyes rolled open, tried to focus, and before he could attempt anything I drove a hateful straight left into his open mouth, putting him OUT. I loved the sight of him sagging back to a lying position in a grotesque slow motion of jaw-hanging gore. "Sherry-Ann is with ME from now on" I shouted into the cab, and who knows if he heard it or not...

"Call an ambulance for this piece of shit, and let's go get your things." An hour and two pieces of luggage later, Sherry-Ann took refuge in my apartment. A roach-infested den of depression and about as dead end as it gets for a pretty young runaway of twenty three. We had sex for the first time that night; a two-way act of consumption that I won't ever forget. We felt like we knew each other far beyond those few weeks of talking, and her forthright way of telling me how to fuck her, how to do the things that she needed done, the way her sexy mouth formed a leering curve when she came so hard and violently around me. It would be a long time before she heard it, but when I called in sick the next morning, I was sure I could love her.

Roy? He hadn't seen what hit him. I heard that he lost most of his upper and lower plate, had to have his nose reconstructed, and a few weeks after that night he and his women vanished from Bunny's and the block. Sherry-Ann settled in with me, took a waitressing job, and we fell into a year-long calm spell... I had saved almost all of my earnings over the past eight years and we made plans to get a house together outside the city core. We had a friendship and the sex was ferocious, but there were hurdles to overcome. I helped Sherry-Ann quit the glass pipe, and she helped me open up.

 Which brings me back to this nameless drinking hole and the large man sharing a scarred wooden table with me. Brings me to a heartbeat of hate, and the day that marked the history of Nolan with a river of tainted blood.

 4. SHIT, MEET THE FAN

 A Friday that began like any other, with the five thirty alarm. Sherry-Ann's warmth against me under the sheets, and the new anticipation of weekend reward in my life. I gave up the bouncer gig at the strip club to spend weekends with my woman, and for the first time ever I had days to look forward to during the workweek. Long lazy mornings in bed together, watching television, having sex, lost in conversation... me, the short fuse with lots on his mind and little to say. Simple, beautiful hours.

That Friday I ate my breakfast alone then walked quietly into the bedroom to kiss Sherry-Ann on the forehead as she slept. Me, the guy who told himself he would never give a shit about anyone... she was asleep on her side, dark brown hair fanned out across the pillow. I ran it through my fingers to make myself believe again that this amazing change had come to my existence, and then left to make the half hour trip to the A.G. Simpson metal stamping plant. I first noticed the horizon of fire when I made the turn into the industrial park on Laird avenue; jet black smoke billowing upward to form the devil's cloud cover, licked from below by a massive wall of flame. I hit the gas and felt my guts sink into the comfortable abyss of my usual state of being, knowing what I was going to see at the end of the avenue, reaching for the radio as I saw the rows of cars lining each side and stopped by a phalanx of police cruisers, ambulances, and fire trucks. The all-news station was on the scene and I learned that a huge explosion had ripped through my place of employment, killing four workers and injuring dozens of others.

"Jesus H. Fuck!" I pulled over and parked on the strip of grass adjacent to the two lane blacktop, got out to watch the blaze. Co-workers either sat in their cars or stood around in groups, shaking their heads at the sight of the apocalypse before them. A couple of them acknowledged me with nods, but most of them ignored me. I told you before, people tended to avoid me and I like it that way. I asked a couple of the guys what they knew, and nobody had shit for info other than the explosion happened just before dawn. Fuck me, I kept thinking, there goes work for a while. Maybe for good if the place is gutted.

I went back to the car, sat and watched the show, and after a couple of hours it occurred to me that I should just go the fuck home to be with the only person I cared about before she went in to work her half day. All the way back toward the small house we were renting, my mind was in a fog that reminded me of the worst of times during my childhood. My sixteenth birthday, when the man who called himself my father arrived to take me out of school because my mother had overdosed on heroin. Waiting in the hospital as she fought her last battle, he found a way to blame me, and that night after her death the beating he dished out had me fearing for my own life. I fought him back for the first time, and even though I hurt that motherfucker, he got the best of me and I spent two days in my room bruised, battered, and determined to leave. Two weeks later, he went in to work the night shift and I escaped. Some day I'll tell you about those first few months... I did things to survive that no one should resort to. If not for my mother's sister, I wouldn't be here today to break deserving skulls.

A half block away from the house I could see a car in the parking pad. A rusty Pontiac Laurentian, dented along the passenger doors and crusted with dirt. What the fuck? I glanced at my watch and it came from the stomach up to my throat; a sick knowledge of a thought that I stopped from forming... without realizing it I was on the brake and slowing. Ten in the morning on a day I'm not supposed to be here until five thirty. She goes to work at twelve, comes home before five. I put the car in reverse and backed up to park against the curb about a dozen houses away from mine, killed the engine and sat in silence. I watched the car in the driveway, looked at the front of the bungalow that framed the inevitable act of betrayal that life had in store for guys like me. For the first time in nearly twenty years I didn't take immediate action. I couldn't, man. I was paralyzed with a cold sweating fear, choking on a feeling like being trapped in a plunging elevator. There was no rationalizing in the car that morning as I sat there watching and so certain that Sherry-Ann was in there destroying us with another man who was soon to pay a price beyond reason.

Almost two hours went by, in a blur, before I decided to leave the car. I strolled over to the house, slowly and not feeling anything I can describe. I was thinking about a movie that I'd seen called "Into The Night", where the main character played by Jeff Goldblum comes home early to find his wife screwing someone. As I walked between my place and the neighbour's, around the side to the back bedroom window, my mind went numb. I always knew that God had put me here in this body for a lifetime of getting fucked. Life is a better fuck than pussy. Life is a twenty four and seven joystick, motherfuckers.

Our bedroom windows bottomed at eye level. An air conditioner filled the lower section of the far pane, so I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the glass of the east frame... the blinds weren't dropped all the way down to the sill and I was able to make out the two shapes on our bed. The bottom of the bed faced the windows, giving me a clear enough look at his big legs and ass as he pumped his erection into her. I felt a scary chill of calm for a moment, watching his balls move back and forth as he rode that beautiful pussy and blocked her from my view through sheer bulk. The sight of her long naked legs, one bent upward and one straightened, and a small hand gripping the blankets... that started the tears and I turned away quickly to walk back to the car.

Those were the longest two hours of my life, longer even than the wait for news about my mother that afternoon in the hospital. I'm not a smoker, so I sat and chewed gum in silence, waiting and getting used to the idea that once again, the dream is over. Fuck life, fuck love, and fuck dreams. Welcome back to reality. You fell for a whore, asshole. She's been turning tricks on the side all this past year and you bought the Hallmark card version of what it should have been and isn't. Last Friday had been a good fucking day that lasted clear through until the following Monday, and THIS one is the end of the world as you know it. Job, woman? Fuck you. Gone.

 The bartender, myself and this half drunken off-duty pig, plus six others who sit at the bar on the far side of this shit-hole. Four hours ago I watched this man leave my house through the front door, as though it were his, and casually get into his old Pontiac. I gave him a decent head start and then followed him across town into the city core. He parked in front of a tired brownstone on the south side, got out and lumbered up the stoop past a sign that read "short term rentals available", and I parked further up the street and did some more waiting. Him first, her later. I couldn't believe it and yet it made perfect sense. I'd deal with him, then Sherry-Ann would get one chance to explain this to me. Just one. I turned to lean against the driver's door, stretched my legs out across the seats, flexed my fingers, and watched the front door of that brownstone. When I made the decision to stop waiting he emerged from the building wearing the same clothes, and I followed him to the fucking dive that now serves as the shit-storm epicentre.

I gave it fifteen minutes before I entered the nameless hole. It took my eyes a moment to adjust from bright afternoon to damaged liver gloom, and the smell of piss and old beer and sweat that hit me like a swinging back-fist. All eyes turned at my entrance, but he was hunched over a pint and facing away from the front door and was the only one not to see me come in. I went straight to the bartender and asked him in a low voice what "that guy over there" was drinking, ordered two pints, and walked the length of the room to his table.

I set the pints down in the middle of the tabletop and pull out a chair around the corner from his, and he looks first at me and then the beer. Back at me, eyes widening as I lower myself and bore lasers into his pupils. "Still a cop?" I slide one pint toward him and raise mine up for a good swallow. He doesn't answer right away, staring me in the face, sizing me up, lost in something... "YOU shoulda been a cop" he mutters. "I followed you here" I tell him right away, let it soak in for a moment. "From the place where I'm staying?" he runs a huge hand through his goatee and greying hair. "No, from my place... the factory where I work is burning today."

He nods slowly, looking down into his beer... "been looking for you, son."

"I've never been your son, mister. I have the scars to prove it."

"I heard you left the city to stay with your aunt for a long time... " his voice trails off in memory. "So you found out where I live, dropped by for a friendly visit, did you?" He smirks a little and I almost throw the bomb right then, but it isn't the right time... I'm throwing for a kill, remember. I play it like I don't mind that he found me, and of course he has no idea that I saw him fucking my woman... no idea that as I sit here getting psyched up to stop his motherfucking heart, my own has been smashed. "So here I am, sir. What can I do for you?" he smirks again.

And it goes like that for nearly an hour, as this beastly childhood force sits next to me and attempts to... what? Atone for something? Correct the damage that he inflicted on his only child? I sit here and listen to his talk about the difficulty of losing my mother, and the failed second and third marriages. I let him ramble through his anger, and I hear nothing but an older version of the gigantic negative force that took all of my potential and crushed it into a compact life-hating machine. I can't even come up with one iota of pity for this prick, and now it's Sherry-Ann I'm thinking of as I glance again at the wall clock and decide it's time. How she could betray me... us... like that, and with THIS of all monsters.

"Tell me something" I interrupt his self pitying rant about spineless judges. "How much did you pay?" He looks at me stupidly, one bushy eyebrow lifting. "For Sherry-Ann this morning" I raise my voice a notch. "What did that cost you?" His hand comes up with the pint as he says "I didn't pay" and I slide the chair back, start the hook from my hip as I rise and pivot to throw thirty five years of poison through my torso and shoulder and forearm and fist as a projectile unlike any I've ever unleashed. Instinctively aimed for his heavy jawline as he tries to react too late, jerking beer over the rim of his glass when I land it and envision my knuckles removing his lower face. The jolt of it through my arm is like an orgasm and he and the chair hit the floor as though a wrecking ball has swung into the tavern. I'm not even looking at the others in the room, and in one chain of events I squat to look at his hanging jaw and the teeth that he is pushing out of his mouth with a bleeding tongue.

The cocksucker is still conscious but the force of the hook has probably broken his neck. I've never seen a head swivel like that. I grab a handful of vest and start dragging him across the floor as the witnesses just begin to realize what has happened, maybe not even giving a damn in a place this rough. I drag the piece of shit across the floor and his face is hitting the legs of chairs, his arms are limp. The bartender yells "hey! take that shit out of here" and I feel a nasty smile crack my mouth. The door near the pool table has one of those metal bars on it that you push, so I lift up my prey with both hands and ram his face into it. Outside in the late afternoon sunshine I can see that his fucking head looks like a shotgun suicide, and his breath is heavy and blood thick. There's a big blue garbage dumpster around back, and I drag him face down by the vest collar, hearing his gun scrape along the asphalt, feeling the swelling along the top of my hand. 

I prop him up in a sitting position against the dumpster and step back to deliver a looping head kick to his temple. His skull whiplashes and he hits the parking lot on his right side. I feel myself nod in agreement, then finish him off with a short toe kick to the throat. From the moment I first hit him to the lifting and tossing of his body into the dumpster I have been outside of myself. I take one final look at his imploded features and spit on them, dropping the metal lid down on the fucking garbage.

Do you think the blades of the fan are now filled with shit? No. There's just one more detail to cap my Friday to end all Fridays. I drive back to my house, just ahead of rush hour traffic. My hand is swollen and cut where I clipped his teeth. My mind is a seething pit of rage and fatality. I don't care about a fucking thing at this point other than to have Sherry-Ann look at me with her gorgeous eyes and talk me out of this crescendo. Tell me it was a moment of weakness, of old habits dying hard... tell me what you have to but tell me everything will be okay.

I pull into the driveway, enter the house, and see that she is home early. Her purse and shoes and waitress outfit are all in the living room. The house is silent and I walk quickly down the middle hall toward the last room on the left where she is lying in bed with her eyes wide open and the belt from her bathrobe knotted up around her neck. My breath hitches in my chest. I turn on the ceiling light. The bedsheets are on the floor, the pillow case beneath her spattered in blood, the tip of her tongue is showing between bloody lips. I nod again in agreement with the universe. Nolan is getting cosmic-fucked now. How DARE I fall in love? Who am I to change what I am?

In an echo of my earlier gesture that morning, I bend over Sherry-Ann to kiss her forehead, then close her eyelids. No tears now. I pack one piece of luggage, turn off the bedroom light, and get into the car to head for the nearest automatic teller. I'll get a hotel room and tomorrow I clear out my savings. Nolan blows this town forever. I'm on a mission now, and before I'm finished people will know about me from coast to coast.

Every lowlife motherfucker in every shitty part of every city has it coming, and I'm the delivery boy.