The State of Things

The year was 2007. It was the season of the cusp; the new year encroached, the calendar would soon flip into 2008. But there was still enough time for two friends to settle into a pub's dark corner, guzzle beer and talk life.

One was called the Gentleman Architect. The other was known simply as the Uncle.

They were reminiscing on their lives, and the Uncle looked melancholy as he grasped his cold pint.

"Listen," said the Uncle. "You know what I miss? I miss fingering Tatiana out on the bow of the Getty Museum. The warm California sun -- intoxicating. Los Angeles was a pile of crushed clamshells at our feet."

The Gentleman smiled but said nothing.

"My dick nuzzling her back.. it was stiff like a cactus, man. They should have put that in the museum. It was an exhibit, a monument to horniness. It was art, pure art. What was most genius was the mirroring of my erect prow with that of the museum's -- that jutting white terrace, I'll never forget it."

He sighed, and continued: "Later that night, on the 101 freeway, she gave me head as we sped eastward into the night. I remember trying to stay in my lane, doing 80 miles an hour, and what a damn distraction it was to have her head in my lap."

Again, the Gentleman was silent, charged with potent wisdom. He sat back and gulped his ale.

"And then there was that time in Tibet where I shagged a raven-haired beauty on the balcony of our hotel in the rain. It was summer; the town was silent. I just sat her soft ass up on that railing, and I railed her, by god. I'll always remember the scent of the dust, and her rain-moistened skin at twilight."

"I'm proud of you," said the Gentleman. "You're already a dirty old man."

"You think I'm self-indulgent now," replied the Uncle. "You'll recall there was a time in which I thought it would be good to kill someone before I die. Just for the intellectual experience, of course."

The Gentleman laughed; it was not shocking that his friend was this way.

"Look," said the Uncle. "I like mischief. I want to create something that will be misinterpreted for generations. So that after I pass on, I may look down -- or up, as it were -- and laugh with secret knowledge."

The Gentleman nodded.

"A year ago," said the Gentleman to the Uncle, "you told me that your resolution for 2007 was to suffer. A year before that it was to be rich and soulful. What's your resolution this year?"

"It's simple," said the Uncle. "My resolution is to be dead."

Wild Things, pt. 1

It's easy to get a little panicky when you're walking amidst a pride of ravenous lions. That's exactly how I felt that day, surrounded by all those slobbering tongues, hanging gracelessly from mouths full of huge, whetted teeth. It took everything I had to affect a sense of composure. Yet, getting to see them up close like this — feeling their satiny coats brush up against me, beholding their royal manner, smelling their strangely familiar lion scent — well, was simply extraordinary.

You're not going to believe this, but that very morning I was in Portland, Oregon, heading to work on the westbound light rail. Damn car was with the mechanic again, this time for a bad oxygen sensor. I wasn't sure what an oxygen sensor was for, but the mechanic made one thing certain: it didn't come cheap. Whatever the hell it did, I couldn't renew the registration on my vehicle until I got it replaced.

I had a pitifully thin budget. If I got a new sensor for my car, I could forget about buying any more Christmas presents this year. My credit cards, with their abominably high interest rates, were already maxed-out. My savings account, depleted. This car repair was a matter of agony, and during that short ride on the light rail, it became my only preoccupation.

"Willow Creek, Southwest 185th Avenue," announced the rail operator over the public address. My stop, but I didn't hear it. I had become lost in worry, biting my nails nervously, looking out at the passing scene but not actually seeing any of it. In this trance I spent an extensive but uncertain amount of time. Before long, the clinic where I worked was far, far behind me.

The slight jolt of a track switch brought me back to attention. I glanced outside at the surroundings. Still no sign of the clinic, whose building's conspicuous 30-60-90-right-triangle shape made it nearly impossible to miss; just a large field of elephant grass, some whistling thornbush, a few candelabra trees, and two highly ordinary giraffe. I already wanted to be done with this day.

Wait a second. Giraffe? Where the hell was I?

"L'aviron, monsieur?" said a scruff voice in the aisle. I turned to notice a rail attendant looking down at me. He wore a long-billed khaki sun cap, a light camouflage shirt with visible splotches of sweat under the armpits, and opaque zinc oxide lotion on his nose. In each of his hands he held a large wooden oar.

"What did you say?" I replied.

"Rowing, sir?" He proffered one of the oars.

"Rowing?" I asked, confounded. "What stop are we coming to?"

"Benue River," he said. "Adamawa Plateau of Cameroon. Doors to the right."

"Cameroon? Wait a second. As in Cameroon, Africa?"

I took another look through the glass. No buildings, or roads, or even farms, just miles and miles of rolling grasslands peppered with yellow-flowering thorn trees. Alongside us, a narrow rivulet of water meandered toward the main river up ahead. In the water I could make out shadows of crocodiles and their scaly snouts poking above the surface; here and there, an elephant on the shore. I turned my attention to some movement in the distance: a pair of lions. They were taking down a white-bearded wildebeest, sinking teeth into its neck and dragging it bloody along the brier. Further ahead, more wildebeests, grazing in the tall grasses; and a zebra chasing off stallions.

I knew at this moment I must have been dreaming. People don't just magically transport to Africa on the Portland light rail. This French rail attendant, the oars, the untamed landscape, were all just fabrications of my sleep-deprived mind. The real me was still somewhere between Portland and Hillsboro, enjoying a nice snooze.

It was also at this moment I observed the attendant, as yet waiting for me to take the oar, making hurried glances at his digital watch. I suddenly remembered an old bit of trivia I learned as a kid, which claimed a digital watch in a dream is impossible to read. So as soon as the attendant brought his watch arm down I stole a peek:

Nine-fifty-seven a.m. and fourteen seconds. Fifteen. Sixteen. Okay, this wasn't working.

I looked around. I wished I had taken notice of the handful of other passengers when I first got on. These ones looked like Portlanders, but were they the same people? Where were they going? And why were they accepting oars from the rail attendants with such nonchalance? The attendant standing over me let off an impatient sigh.

"No thank you," I said. "I will be getting off here."

"Suit yourself," he said abruptly, and continued to the next row of seats.

I stood up and hurried to the doors, the force of the rapidly decelerating train tripping my step. Before I disembarked, I turned to the closest rider, a old wheelchair-bound man in an Oregon Ducks tracksuit. He too had an oar, which he held casually across his lap. He was too busy with his Sudoku puzzle to catch my stare.

"Excuse me," I interrupted.

"Wha?!" he answered with a start.

"Can you tell me where you are headed?"

"Who me? I'm just going for a tour of the savanna of course."

"Of course," I mumbled. I felt my disbelief swelling within me; I refused to believe this wasn't a dream. I was simply a passenger aboard a train of my own creation, traveling through a land of my own absurd thoughts. And if I didn't want to be egregiously late for work, I had to do whatever it would take to wake myself up. Whatever it would take.

The doors slid swiftly open, and I leaped out, like a dog from a kennel, into the shade of a gnarled candelabra tree. Turning around to watch the train depart, I finally understood what the rail attendant meant. The tracks actually ended up ahead, sloping into the river a few yards away. The river was maybe the width of an interstate freeway; the channel of water we had been following flowed into it here. Before us, the river slithered and descended between some volcanic crags toward a destination unknown to me. Behind us, from where we came, the tracks ran a straight line along the plateau for miles and disappeared into the horizon.

Meanwhile, amid a fanfare of whirring motors, the train was undergoing an incredible transformation. Emerging from the underside of the train were two separate boat hulls, similar to the body of a catamaran. The hulls, each about a third the diameter of the cabin itself, extended downwardly and outwardly toward the ground. After they contacted the ground they continued to lower, eventually pushing the train cabin up off of its grooved rail track. Thin panels running the length of the train on each side opened automatically, and then a few oars here and there started reaching out through them. The train was becoming a ferryboat.

In another few moments, the transformation terminated, and the motors switched off. "The doors are closing," I heard from inside the cabin; and with a brief flash of caution lights in each doorway, they did. Carefully, the new ferryboat slid forward on a smooth concrete ramp, powered by a final stretch of overhead electric lines, before disengaging from them and slipping quietly into the river. As soon as it was completely waterborne, a large air cushion between the hulls inflated rapidly.

There I was, standing alone on the shore, while the Portland light rail floated lazily away on the Benue River. I had just renounced what was probably my only link back to civilization. Watching the ferryboat dwindle toward the skyline, I tried to ignore the sudden and unexpected pang of doubt creeping into my mind. If this really was a dream, why had I started to worry about when the next train was due?

My attention turned to the river itself now, churning with a healthy population of crocodiles. "Just a dream," I reminded myself. But I knew there was only one way to find out.

Splattered-Out, Ch. 1, pt. 3

The dogs -- there were five of them -- were a truly mangy pack of God-forsaken, alley-skulking, ne'er-do-well creatures. Their fur was matted, their eyes encrusted. The entire lot of them looked sickly and desperate, tongues dangling languidly from their mouths.

The dog at the forefront of the pack snapped the brief silence: "Oi. Got a live one 'ere, eh boys?"

"Yeah," panted a second, "Looks tasty to me, yeah."

Callus hissed, "What do you want, dogs?"

"Oh, just a little fun," the first replied, scratching his ear with his hind leg.

"Just a friendly little game of cards, that's all," said another, with a peculiar doggish casualness. Needless to say, Callus was agog.

"We're the sporting type, you see," added a third.

"Here's the deal," said the first. "One game. If you win, we let you pass. If you lose, you become dinner."

"The cards, Frankie" barked the leader, and before Callus could protest, a particularly scraggly mutt hobbled into view. With a pathetic wheeze, the dog coughed up a deck of playing cards, which landed with a wet splat onto the filthy ground.

Callus turned and cast a dire look backwards. Any minute his pursuers would come storming into the alley, guns blazing. And, in spite of their condition, these dogs were an obviously crafty lot, quick, razor-toothed and ready to pounce. There were too many at this close range for Callus to take out all at once, and even a nip from one of them would surely bestow upon Callus a generous collection of disease and pestilence. His only choice was to play. Fortunately, Callus had some tricks of his own.

He reached out, and, with severe distaste, grabbed the wet, slimy deck. He quickly thumbed through the cards, ensured the deck was complete, shuffled twice, surreptitiously palmed four aces, and proceeded to deal two hands -- one to himself, the other to the pack leader.

Now, two things should be noted here. The first is this: most civilized cultures are known to play one or another form of the game popularly known as Blackjack. In Og Pog's grimy back alleys and side streets, thousands of games can be found at any given time -- indeed, this is how most of the cursed denizens pass their time. Cheating was encouraged. Indeed, for most players, cheating was the main objective.

The other thing that should be noted is that Callus was a proficient card handler, having perfected his sleight of hand early in life. He dealt the cards smoothly -- a jack and queen to his canine opponent, a ten and seven to himself.

The dog liked his odds. "Twenty is good," it said. "Stand."

Callus eyed his adversary with faux distrust, and said, "Well, guess I gotta hit then, no?"

He dealt the first of the palmed cards with machinelike precision. "Ace," said the dog, grinning a maniacal canine grin.

"I'll hit again," replied Callus nonchalantly, and dealt the second of the four aces. "Ah, ace again!"

The dog's grin grew wider; a meal appeared imminent. "Nineteen. Better hit again, boy."

Callus smiled and followed the suggestion, flipping the third ace to the ground. The beast's eyes goggled as it pondered the odds of three consecutive aces.

"Well then, I guess we push, eh? Deal again."

"Nope," replied Callus, "I play to win. I'm gonna hit."

The dog was taken aback at Callus' suddenly businesslike attitude. His face quickly returning to a menacing glare, the dog said, "then prepare to become chow for me and my mates, yeah?"

Callus simply smirked and slowly revealed the fourth ace, staring with complete confidence into the dog's dumbstruck eyes. "My lucky day," Callus growled coldly. "Let me pass."

The dog snarled and sprung forward, teeth bared -- Callus deftly caught its throat hard in mid-flight, clutching its neck forcefully, raising it into the air. He could feel the satisfying crunch of the animal's larynx in his grasp as he pivoted in one swift motion, swiveling, simultaneously dodging a leaping attack from another beast. As Callus pirouetted, he released his grip, hurling the first dog forcefully into the alleyway's brick wall, and, with his free hand, raised his weapon to blast a third dog directly in the face. The shot, traveling the length of the pouncing dog's airborne body, split the animal wide open in a profoundly disgusting spray of blood and decimated entrails -- and, before the ragged chunks had even fully separated and splattered across the walls, Callus was dashing forward urgently through the muck, catching another of the pack mid-stride with a full kick to the jaw, snapping its neck and sending it careening lifelessly into the side of a nearby dumpster with a metallic thud. Sprinting now, the two remaining dogs in pursuit, he ran unobstructed to the opening of the alleyway, now thirty feet away, now twenty, now ten...

Kiss It All Goodbye

The somnolent beggar refused to open his eyes to the slowly brightening sky. He thought the night couldn’t have ended so quickly. He clutched his half-empty bottle of gin while the memory of drinking with his buddies swirled in his intoxicated mind. The light slowly grew and the leaves on the ground rustled. With the exception of a distant hum, the streets remained quiet.

He lay there in the curb while the world spun sickeningly around him. The only thing the beggar could in any way focus on was the ghostly hum, which seemed to be more powerful now than just a moment ago. As the light of the sky poured down on him his eyes only closed more tightly. The warm breeze prickled his icy skin.

The hum reminded him of the noise his ears would make after hearing the thunderous rock concerts he used to attend as a teenager. He went to the concerts to avoid a family who always criticized and belittled him. “Why can’t you have friends like I did when I was young?” his father would protest. His mother, silent and austere, never offered the love or tenderness that other mothers did. The memory rode around in his head like a merry-go-round.

He had friends who came to the concerts with him, friends with whom he shared years of life and long nights of illicit party-crashing, but who after time drifted away until they were just faces in the crowd. His friends were straightforward and self-assured. They made him a better man. Where were they now when he needed them most?

As the memories abated, he quickly became aware of his predicament. Several days had passed since his last shower. His socks were still soaked from rainwater that had seeped into the cracked soles of his shoes. His wallet – nowhere to be found. Dispirited, he curled his body away from the light and attempted to go back to sleep, but the hum wanted his attention.

He pondered the strange noise. It purred and rumbled melodically. It seemed to come from both far above and far below him. How entrancing it was to listen to this hum. The more he listened the more it entranced him. With his eyes still closed, he turned himself on his back and stretched his arms slightly. Somehow the light didn’t seem as intrusive as before. He stopped thinking about his miserable state for a moment and let his mind drift lazily about, contemplating the unusual hum.

At last, something was taking his attention away from his problems the way that booze never could. The hum vibrated warmly, and he felt his tension slowly evaporating. His melancholy, which seemed infinite and all-consuming only minutes ago, began to release its paralyzing grip. In this moment, he felt undeservedly serene. He thought about opening his eyes, but he knew to do so would break this spell, this wonderful meditation.

The beggar yawned. Soon he would have to open his eyes to a new day. Perhaps, he thought in earnest reflection, this will be the day I finally put my past behind me. He forced a bewhiskered grin. Perhaps this will be the day I start getting my life together. He considered the bottle of gin, opened his hand and let it roll away. Emerging inside him was a feeling he hadn't felt in far too long: it was the feeling of hope.

By now, though, the hum annoyed the beggar more than intrigued him, and he decided once and for all that he would open his eyes, but – mindfully.

He briefly saw the headlamps on a small, unpiloted jet plane hurtling toward him, then his life ended.

Splattered-Out, Ch. 1, pt. 2

He looked into the face of the homeless man. It was a gritty, unshaven face. He didn't trust him. Callus clenched his teeth and leaned in closely. He began to speak:

"Listen," he began, and just then -- a sharp crack, followed instantaneously by the shrill zing of a sniper's bullet whipping past, which exploded in the dust a few feet away.

The quick firing of synapses, the violent injection of adrenaline into his bloodstream -- a nanosecond of biology, and Callus was already in the air, springing instinctually towards cover, a pile of garbage on the sidewalk, throwing his body over the trash heap and landing with a ridiculously loud clatter on a pile of broken bottles, which attracted the attention of a nearby pack of feral dogs.

Another crack, this time from a different angle, the rifle's brittle noise left echoing against the street's crumbling concrete husks. A bullet slammed into a bottle mere inches from Callus's prone body, kicking pulverized glass into his face. An instant of trajectory calculation equated itself in Callus's mind, and, with alarming speed, he was up again, having pushed himself off the ground with such force that, as he rose to his feet, he grabbed his sidearm, executed a 180-degree turn, and triggered a well-targeted shot toward a silhouetted figure on a nearby roofline. A half-second for Callus's bullet to traverse the distance, and the figure, about 100 yards away, fell twisting backwards, the shot having taken off his right shoulder in an explosion of blood and tissue. In that momentary timespan, Callus was already running at full speed toward an adjacent alleyway, as another shot from the first sniper blasted the wall behind him.

All of this within the span of a few seconds.

Callus turned sharply into the darkened passageway and hurtled through the rotted garbage and strewn muck, cans clattering in his wake, his feet splashing through puddles of foul and unknown substance, and, as he looked towards the alley's exit, he saw his path obstructed by the pack of wild dogs he had roused moments earlier -- snarling, eyes glowing in the darkness. He knew that death lay behind him, and his nameless attackers would be charging into the passage at any second. His only hope was through these sinewy, rabies-infected beasts...

Splattered-Out, Ch. 1, pt. 1

Og Pog. It was a planet that didn't matter. It especially didn't matter to God. It was an ugly, deformed mistake of a planet, a hideous blemish on an otherwise perfectly beautiful solar system. In fact God had once sent an asteroid to destroy the planet a few centuries back, but its audacious citizens deflected the asteroid with their huge arsenal of nuclear rocket launchers. God left Og Pog alone after that, because, even for God, calling up an asteroid to destroy a planet is a pain in the ass.

When Callus Presexed landed one early morning in Og Pog's industrial district, he felt like a fly landing on an old piece of dog shit. There were piles of rubble everywhere; a few were punctuated by dead bums. The streetlamps were bent completely out of form, drooping like stems of flowers that had just been trampled by giants. Some of the buildings that still stood had their entire facades ripped away, revealing the interiors of offices, restaurants, and tawdry merchandise outlets long abandoned. In general the boulevard looked like it had just suffered a stampede of angry rhinos.

Having just taken out another army of space mercenaries who wanted Og Pog eradicated, Callus felt just as exhausted as the grime-slicked street he dragged his feet upon. But this planet was his home, and it pissed him off that nobody was there to greet him. "I've rescued this planet from certain destruction seventeen times," he soliloquized, "and this is the fucking thanks I get?"

Callus advanced with an irritated swagger. His spirit was absent, lost somewhere under the ruins of the shattered world. Only a weary, wounded shell of him remained: his face, ashen, bleeding other people's blood; his striped henley, soiled with wads of cooked muscle tissue debris; his fully automatic riot shotgun, barrels chipped and slightly warped by napalm fire. The man desperately needed some refreshment, but his chances of finding it were slim.

Suddenly, a mob of gangly street urchins burst out from behind a brick wall, yelling "Surprise!" Indeed Callus was surprised; he whipped around and reflexively pulled the trigger on his riot shotgun, firing off six rounds. All but two of the men were killed instantly. The two still standing clutched between them a festive "Welcome home!" banner -- which was now splashed with blood and perforated with flaming holes.

"My God," Callus stammered, "I'm... really sorry about that."

The guy on the left didn't hear the apology because his ears were too busy ringing. He just stood there, stupefied and quivering, like a man who had just been tasered. The guy on the right gracefully dropped dead from blood loss.

"It seems..." the guy on the left began in a rasping tone, "it seems I picked the wrong day to quit meth."

Callus bent toward the man's face. "You look familiar," he said, squinting at him as if reading the fine print in a contract. "Have I tortured you before?"

"What?" the man replied. "Do I look familiar? Is this some kind of test?"

"Test? Look, who the hell are you and what are you doing here?"

"Are you not just screwing with me, sir? I'm one of your cronies. I'm the one you hired to pay you endless compliments, remember?"

"Cronies?!" Callus grated. "Listen, you crazy bum..."

"Oh, sorry sir. I meant to say 'associates.'"

"Buddy, the only associates I have are the girls from the falafel truck. And that's just because they dig the poly thing, okay? I sure as hell don't have an entourage of filthy beggars."

"Filthy beggars?! Excuse me sir, but we're men and we have names."

"Whoever you guys are -- well, most of you are dead -- I'm sorry about all this; but I really need to get going."

"Are you sure you don't remember me, sir?" the bum asked warily. "You have me pay you compliments all the time. You know, like 'You're the greatest, sir,' and 'You've got more guts than a cat food factory, sir.' Yeah, you've had me say that one lots of times."

"Hey, I don't need to hire anyone to give me compliments, I get enough of them as it is. And why do you have to keep calling me 'sir?'"

The man just stared at Callus incredulously.

"Crazy dope fiend," Callus mumbled. He wished that was really all this was, just a typical encounter with another homeless nutcase. Though inside he was feeling differently: an instinctual urgency, not only about the man but everything around him. Og Pog had always been a world on the edge of oblivion, yet something about it now seemed altogether more sinister, more dangerous. It made Callus nervous.

His sense of his surroundings intensified: he could feel the slight shifts of gravel under the soles of his boots; taste every particle of soot and dumpster rot floating through the warm breeze; even hear the distant but unmistakable basslines and melodic riffs from his favorite dance club.

Well, in truth, Og Pog didn't have a dance club. It was just Callus's tinnitis from way too many nights of heavy partying. But when in that moment a small, unmanned jet plane fell out of the sky and crashed into a distant pile of rubble, even Callus's ravaged hearing was good enough to notice.