Sewer Problems

“They’ve got short sewer pipes. You may not think that’s a problem, what with not thinking of the sewers and all, but problem is, snakes have been crawling up those pipes. And you know where most of them lead?”

“Where?”

“They lead to toilets, Daughtry. The pipes lead to toilets.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh,’ is not a good enough exclamation for the amount of snake bitten taints I’ve seen in the past five weeks. ‘Oh!’ Is barely the bottom level shout someone might make if a coral snake were to spring out of their sewer pipe and latch onto their tender garden. Now, Daughtry, I know you’re trying. But please understand that we’re dealing with matters of life and death. A snake bite can be dangerous. But the embarrassment of being bit in the private parts in your own home? That can be fatal.”

“Oh.”

“Hell, some folks won’t even pick up the phone to call the ambulance. They’d rather die in agony than admit there’s little snakey sleuths crawling through their pipes and bitin’ they’re ‘you know whats,’ But that’s not matter for me. I still gotta investigate them all.”

“All of them?”

“All of them. Not what you expected in medical school, huh?”

“Not at all.”

“This is it. The glamorous life of a mortician. Well, once you get to it. But for now? You’ll be doing the cutting and capping. Someone’s gotta write those reports up. And after the horror of identifying the sorry sons of bitches, it ain’t gonna be me.”

“So… it’ll be me?”

“See— I knew you were a streetwise kid once you stepped in here with those scuffed penny loafers and a dangle ring bowl cut. We’ll make a hell of a team, boy.” Doc gave Daughtry’s limp hand a quick pump and turned towards the door. “And remember— best not to use the facilities here. Save that for Murdoch county.”

Musical Notes

There’s a surprising amount of jazz in my day-to-day life. Certainly more than I would’ve ever expected as I run to school and the sunken front seat of my dad‘s black 2002 Nissan Sentra. He would occasionally play a CD of Kenny G and I would consider those to be some of the worst mornings in high school.

It’s funny, because when I went back to visit Portland this summer, I told my father this, and he had no memory of it at all. Just as I suspect, he would not recall his visceral dislike of Regina Spektor for her lilting tones, but his undying love for Joni Mitchell. Who is a much admired and influential artist, and at the same time, is someone I myself can’t stand to listen to.

For two years running after a success of six years, I will not have Mac Miller as my top artist on Spotify. I’m sure that I won’t have him in my top artists at all. Neither will I have Mother, Mother, or The Kooks, Sum 41, The Offspring. Many of those are bands that I grew up, listening to, and had a big deal of influence on myself. You can listen to the new moon anthology from Elliot Smith, and see tones of it in certain writing pieces of mine.

I can look back at photos and hear certain songs. In Eugene, when I was 18 years old I can hear the song “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities. I can hear the song “Morocco” by Moon Taxi for Ashland. During my Trader Joe’s, and final Starbucks stint in Portland, I can hear Overdose by Ghost Loft.

Missoula is home to “The Muse” by The Wood Brothers. It’s also home to many a GTA and other hype songs. “Big John” by Jimmy Dean. It has the memories of walking the north end of town as I trek from the Cooley street house. My doublewide that couldn’t pump heat into the bedrooms. Then the Lewis and Clark apartments with their weary coats of beige paint. I’d listen to the Black Keys and play Fifa. Drinking Summer Honey beers and learning that when people keep making the “yeesh” face when I mentioned who my roommate was, to believe there was a good reason.

I can hear the tight spell of lines from Deca as I’d bounce my head between classes. I can remember the shift as I’d finish the day and prepare to head to the racquet ball courts to kick the ball around with Henry.

In returning to Portland I can hear “Bernard Trigger” by Cleopatrick. Lots and lots of Cleopatrick to be honest. The return to coaching also brought the high energy, get pumped up music that they supply by the truckload. I can hear “Jealously” by Robert Delong. The memories of a blurry concerts and pulsing energy. I can hear the quieter notes of Lucius and Drug Store Romeos.

I can hear Wulfpeck and Cory Wong. I can hear the drum beats being echoed by Julius as pop beats would roar over the home speakers during a regular summer grill session.

In Tsushima I’ll think of “Nowhere in No Time” by Eileen Jewel and “Candy” by Paolo Nutini for the winter months as I’d play Fifa and curse the cold. I’ll think of “Well Acquainted” by Dick Stusso whenever I see photos of Izuhara and the verdant forests surrounding it.

There’s almost eight thousand songs in my private Spotify playlist. Some breathe fire while others gasp for air. It would be impossible to distill each distinctive period with a comprehensive list, but I try my best to remember touchstone songs to former versions of myself.

Revery

There’s an old man singing in the woods above the road I’m walking on.  I hear it from above the abandoned lot where a house once sat. All that remains is a cement foundation.

I know no stories nor any names.

I know there’s a tori gate above. A path leading to a shrine on the mountain they call “Turtle Rock.” A scroll from the 1500’s names it. The name itself is supposed to be older.

The man that sings in the first chill autumn night. I wonder if he’s older still.

I wonder if he stands at the edge of the gate. Waiting for the faithful to journey to the forgotten shrine above an olden way post between one world and the next.

I keep my headphones in. Not pausing to listen. I don’t let my feet stop either.

There’s no one else on this road.

The curling mess of asphalt between the eastern edge of the island and the beginning of the bay.

I try not to think of the creaks above my apartment at night.

How I live on the top floor and above there’s nothing but roof.

How it sounds like someone walking from time to time.

I play music most nights. I run the AC or heat even when it’s not needed.

When I could sit in the silence.

But that’s the problem. There’s no silence. Not here.

Not on this island— with its lost graves and hidden portal. Not with the edge of reality tucking inward as the outward pressure of something beyond comprehension looms.

A viper waiting to strike—-

Except there’s no venom to what comes next.

No horrible death or agony.

What comes next is—

Mercy

“It’s important to have a sense of mercy about these things,” she said stroking his hair. “It’s far too easy to be cruel when the world needs a tender touch.” Her hand stilled over his golden crown. She brushed his bangs away from his eyes. The young prince sat nestled in her lap. It had been too long without word from his father, the king, and the court grew worried about the coming burden the young boy faced if he failed to return.

Desandra sang a lilting tune filled with the peaks and valleys of hope and sorrow— she knew there were no words to comfort the creeping fears that came to the prince at night. Only momentary reprieves and gentle attention were cherished gifts now.

He worried her. As all gentle boys worry powerful mothers.

She worried about the cost of kindness. The burden an absent father placed on a family. An errant king from a kingdom.

She cursed him as she mourned the unrumpled sheets aside her in bed.

Mercy in rule and grace in judgement. Two qualities in short supply as they passed beyond the Age of Heroes.

***

Months had passed since the king had ridden to Malton Keep. He’d assembled a company after the courtier Amara failed to return. Something she’d never done before. Even with the adventures into the courts of the far east and hostile southern reaches. A mission to Malton Keep? One of the bastions of power for the king and his alliance? She should have been back within days. Now, the queen, felt on the verge of becoming the queen mother. Either way, it had to be her hand that steadied the court in Leon’s absence.

Desandra knew she had to send another company to seek out the king, but the last three had vanished without a trace. Something dark had hold of Malton Keep and no weak wrist-ed noble could wave her off about it. If she had to hear another whine about the royal coffers she’d melt down the coins in their purse and mask them with it. She shook herself at the sudden, vicious thought. She couldn’t raise Alden in sight of such acts and preach the necessity of kindness. She couldn’t keep him in sight at all if whatever dwell in the Keep were to advance to the capitol of Rania.

Dread

He slid a bruised thumb down the outside of his spine. The nail catching on the itchy spot he’d been trying to reach for hours.

His shoulders didn’t want to rotate without a horrible breakfast cereal anthem of snaps and pops.

He ran his dry tongue over cracked lips. A tickle perched in his throat for two days now.

He’d hope for a camera crew or EMT to burst through the door, but the shadows had disabused him of the notion of rescue.

He clung on the frayed bits of survival that rallied his soul. Even those had started to slip.

A man needs the light. Hell, everything does except whatever lives on the ocean floor. Be it sunlight or moon, it didn’t matter. He needed something to break up the checkered pattern blanket of darkness that flirted with the growing insanity of his mind.

Terror didn’t explain the feeling.

It was an older than terror. It was entropy plucking at your mortal coil— its name was dread.

The last time he had felt it had been a lifetime ago.

He’d been a young boy on an early summer morning. He’d awoken to a quiet, sunny house. He breezed through it in a lazy search for food.

The search took him to the cellar. A cement floor and flimsy wall dividers divvying up the sections of old family members items and various furniture pieces.

The icebox held the answers for him that morning. Or so he’d thought.

But as he rummaged through the two plywood cabinets for snacks, an uneasy feeling fell over him.

He realized he was standing alone in a dark basement— but it didn’t feel as though he was the only one there.

He slowly crept back to the stairs. His bare feet reached the wooden landing and as he stepped up the main staircase, he heard the heavy sound of boots behind on the stairs. He shot up the remaining ten steps like a reverse lightning bolt— he lunged through the doorway into the living room and scrambled out to the porch before he looked behind him to find… nothing.

No one was there. He waited. He crept back silently. Tears falling down his face. But no one was there.

The boom of the heavy boots on wood. The fevered pace behind him. Nowhere to be found.

Sitting in the shadows— now he was what was nowhere to be found.

Guard Duty

Dunny shook himself, trying to ease the tension in his neck. He’d stood guard at the western gate for three extra hours as Ulfric struggled to capture their dinner. Eventually Dunny caught sight of a ragged character limping towards him. A thin trickle of blood ran behind the man.

“Ulfric?” The man made no reply. Dunny tightened his grip on his spear. He hadn’t become a guard to fight anyone. A couple of coins and a roof over his head was enough. Not enough to actually fight anyone though. “Ulfric? Did you get hurt?”

The man lifted a heretic’s grin and let loose a wild screech before charging. Dunny tried to remember his instructions as a bony hand reach for him. It didn’t find him. It didn’t find anything— as the man let out a surprised whoof of air. He pitched forward and fell into the mud at Dunny’s feet. A red fletched arrow rose out of his back. Dunny tracked the path to a frowning Ulfric.

“… is that actually you, Ulfric?”

“As luck would have it, boy, yes, it is,” he took a rough breath. “That pig fuck jumped me in the woods. Didn’t know the castoffs had made it through winter. Wish they didn’t.” Dunny looked down at the frayed supplicants robe. The faded ash smeared onto the man’s skinny arms. Dunny had never seen one in person before. A supplicant of Mulden. The last God of the shadows. He shivered even thinking the name.

“Think there are any more?”

“Hard to say. Hope not. But I won’t say no to killing more.” Ulfric’s bow had seen more live shots than most— not that he talked about it.

Time Field

“Time isn’t linear, love,” she swept a sweat drenched lock across Orion’s forehead as the fever kept him locked in the bedroom. Since coming back from a dig in southern Egypt, he had recurring bouts of malaria.

Alicia sang soft songs as she sat on the bedside. She hated the dreams the fevers brought him. He’d wake and look at her with wild eyes— as if he’d never seen her. It took anywhere from seconds to minutes to bring him back from wherever the ether drug him to. The songs seemed to keep the confusion at bay. The dreams themselves seemed to slip from him like water droplets when her voice swirled through the room.

Alicia never cried in front of Orion about the dreams. But the first steps outside the room often were the hardest.

Cosmic Iguana and the Water of Stars

Where there is water there is life.

In deep space— that’s often a troubling thing to discover.

The wonders of the universe are not uniformly passive and safe.

Mind bending terrors live beyond the arc of long dead comets.

Trailing in their metallic tail that drifts in a lazy river of rivets.

The body falls before the mind— as the prostrate before a shrine.

Horror claims as many converts as the holy.

Who is to say they are not the same?

Sherman

The elephantine trumpet of the garbage truck brakes and diesel plume that followed.

The smell of skeleton grass, sun warmed strawberries and bits of dirt. The “chk, chk, chk” of the sprinkler cutting the spray across the garden.

The hiss and gurgle of a labored coffee machine. Java laced steam spirals upward.

The click of claws as a dog circles the kitchen island in search of scratches.

Darkened pages where ink stained fingers flipped through old passages. A demarcated middle between unsullied and personalized.

Ripe cavendish bananas and trivia facts. Paper on every surface. Books, newspapers, magazines, notes. Anything. Everything. Posters and art— cards filled with calligraphy— ink resides in this house like a reigning monarch.

Night Scramble

I write this in the witching hour— woken from sleep with a wheezing chest.

I touched the frosted edges of death in my dream. My heart giving out in a hallway as those around me scrambled to find help.

I limped through a store to find Cris and a man named Lawrence who I had fought in the ring. The decision went his way— which he despised— because I had given up because of my heart.

He begrudgingly joined me as I toddled towards the exit.

Cris followed close by— grabbing snacks for me as I felt the energy begin to fade.

I finished the end of Blacktongue Thief in the night’s darkness as I calmed myself in reality.

The shimmer between worlds felt particularly thin.

I had flown in a small plane to a lakeside land with Alec. He had gotten a huge job on a faraway set and I had joined in a smaller role.

We stood at the edge of a pond and woke the alligators within. We ran— but Alec became Stefan.

And Stefan became Donna as I knelt in the hallway— before reaching the store and the interlude of a stand up fight with Lawrence in a ring.

Time and identities swirled together like soap bubble colors.

I’m now weak lidded and falling out of the stream of consciousness and poetry.

I walked along the grass picked edge of a bluff overlooking a golf course. A wide, empty street bearing memories of childhood lay to my right.

Not yet thirty and sitting at tables with married peers and open discussion of children.

Why does that feel pushed far to the back— like dirty socks in a cramped closet. Never dealt with— always gifted to a future version to fret with.