Announcing the release of the new novel, Birthing the Lucifer Star

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://forms.listwire.com/7662/4810.js"></script>
My book "birthing the lucifer star is now on sale."

 

Please visit my website http://hipriestess.com/blog to read scifi sundays with the hipriestess. 

. I am selling the book on kindle, as an ebook, at amazon, lulu
and myebooks.com and you will find my book, hard copy on sale at every major bookstore.

hyperlinks: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11567
http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=27255
http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=67957

So buy my book, or promote it through amazon. If you are an amazon affiliate, you can create an amazon widget with my novel, "Birthing the Lucifer star" and post it on your website.

My deal is this, buy the book and get 15 mlm ebooks for free.

 

Birthing the Lucifer star,  Book review

Do We hear the call?? In our everyday reality, the great spirit calls us to redeem ourselves and those around us from the ruler of this world. If you heard the call, what would you choose. For many are called, but few are chosen. Those who hear and answer the call do so to the peril of their very soul. Follow the woman of the wilderness and the hero, a great warrior of the first nation, as they risk life and limb to redeem first themselves then all of turtle island...

A sparse, my...more Do We hear the call?? In our everyday reality, the great spirit calls us to redeem ourselves and those around us from the ruler of this world. If you heard the call, what would you choose. For many are called, but few are chosen. Those who hear and answer the call do so to the peril of their very soul. Follow the woman of the wilderness and the hero, a great warrior of the first nation, as they risk life and limb to redeem first themselves then all of turtle island...

A sparse, mythical writing style and complex storytelling ensure the success of D. E. Bartley's portrayal of a celebrated Native American warrior who rediscovers his divinity, and a Brooklyn daughter of Jacob who wanders the wilderness trying to answer the call.

 

EXCERPT:

 

 

 Chapter 15: Secret Bilderberger Meeting
The Lords of Belgium sat in conference, reviewing the current state of the economy around the world. Sir Rothschild was receiving the reports of his lesser chief, the royal crown of England.
"My faithful servant, what is your report?"
"Sire, I bring disturbing news from the American sector. The production targets on the flu vaccine are being met, but industrial progress is slow. Asia, meanwhile-they are much closer to their targets and have been making greater progress."
"What should I see as disturbing in that last report?"
"Sire, if you will recall, the Americans are leaderless, their President, is our puppet, so no one really takes him seriously %u2026 They have been making these improvements on their own initiative. As they clearly are outstripping India and China, where there are strong leaders in place, they are gaining pride in their own progress, their own initiative."
"I see. That could be grave. The dollar has not yet reached its intrinsic value of zero. Confidence in their own capabilities could cause them to resent the taxes and levies they pay to us %u2026 damned Americans refuse to be subservient."
"In fact, sire, there have been inquiries regarding certain levies of ours. Complaints have been made that certain line items are excessive."
"Then we need to take action. Tell me: has their progress been steady?"
"For the most part, sire, yes. However, in the last reporting period, we note a leveling out. Some discontent with this is evident in the tone of the reports; there have even been rumors that certain states want to create their own greenbacks."
"Then we have our window of opportunity."
"Sire? I don't understand."
"My faithful servant," the Lord Rothschild said, a tone of deliberate patience in his voice, "please recite for me the mantra of progressive evolution."
"Evolvement is not a steady upward curve, but is a series of steps punctuated by periods of little or no upward movement, known as plateaus. When a table is reached, it is important not to forsake the methods bringing progress, but to persevere and accumulate the incremental improvements that will finally break out of the plateau and once again bring upward mobilization."
"This is what brings us our opportunity to institute change to our benefit," the Lord Rothschild stated.
The queen was clearly perplexed. "Change, sire? I thought the mantra of progressive evolution dictated steadfastness, patience, and perseverance?"
"Recite for me the mantra of reconstruction."
The queen stood silent, at a loss. Across the table from her, Warren Buffett stood up, smiling smugly. "Reconstruction is good when instituted and controlled from above. Altering the status quo from below becomes good only when it is accepted and taken under direction from above."
"Very good, Warren; you may sit down. Now, explain how this fits the current situation."
Ben Bernanke stood, was recognized, and then spoke. "The current situation allows us to invoke the mantra of reconstruction to our advantage. We can accomplish our objectives by instituting a change of our own that will co-opt their change and bring it completely under our control."
"Most excellent, my loyal servant. I see that you, at least, have been paying attention. Put yourself in for a raise. I will approve it."
"Thank you, sire!" Bernanke wiped a tear of gratitude from the corner of his eye.
Lord Rothschild gestured, and his underlings sat down. "The Americans cannot be allowed to continue to self-govern and question our legitimate rule." He smiled coldly. "Therefore, we need to create a large enough altercation to shake their little world. The silly mass shootings being blamed on Muslims are just not viable; the Americans are seeing through these black ops. However, there will be a new sun in place by the time the current plateau is overcome, and we'll see that the credit for this incredible feat or progress falls to us. Thus, we will reassert our control, and the questioning of our levies will cease. George, when does Cassini II launch?"
"It launches in just 7 days-a most wise plan, sire," said George Herbert Walker Bush. "We will show them our power and confirm our control."
"Thank you, George. The Cassini is equipped with two tons of plutonium; we have directed the ship toward Jupiter, and hopefully the nuclear fission will be enough to create a sustainable blaze, creating a new sun. It is imperative that we get this right. Does anyone have any questions? No? Good. Then this meeting is officially adjourned."
 

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Heroe's always remember

 

I was sitting on the porch when I heard the sound of the dove come from the old millpond. The dove's mournful call stopped, and then I heard death coming down the country road that ran passed my grandparent's farm. It broke the Sunday afternoon apart and silenced the dove.

My grandmother’s name was Gloria Roberts. My grandfather was already dead by that fall, finally killed by the gas that began to eat his lungs in the trenches of France in 1918; buried with his Croix de Guerre.

My grandparents lived in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina, in a place with a name you couldn't find on a map. They lived in the midst of horizon-to-horizon tobacco fields that grew over my head; hid me in forests of green like the jungles of Tarzan, and where I ran wild, invisible to the world, feeling the hot sand of the fields between my bare toes.

I was ten year old, sitting on the porch of my grandparent’s house and dreaming a boy’s dreams, when the call of the dove stopped.

I heard screaming metal, an engine trying to tear itself apart, howling like a tortured animal. I looked toward the road. I could see the small white dot of my grandmother’s mailbox, atop its post and leaning a little to the right, on the other side of the road.

Then I saw it. It came from the left, a flash of blue. And it began to fly. If left the ground and climbed toward the sky over the tobacco fields, trying to fly over the ditch by the side of the road. The sky and the car were almost the same pale-blue color.

Halfway up the arc of its climb, the car rolled, like an airplane doing stunts. I could see the workings beneath it. They were lewd, as if the car was naked. The car seemed to hang at the top of the arc, its black belly exposed, and then it fell.

The car fell into the ditch and kicked up dirt that floated and drifted in the air around it. It landed on its top and the wheels kept spinning. The roaring engine died when the car hit the ditch and I could hear the spinning wheels. They made a rumbling and whirring sound.

I jumped off the porch and ran. I don’t know why I didn’t run to find my grandmother. She was in the garden in the back of the house, bent over her black-eyed Susan’s. But I didn’t run for her, I ran toward the upside down car, its wheels starting to slow down now, but still spinning. I was thirteen years old and I was running toward death. But I didn’t know it.

There was a breeze ruffling something; making something pink move and dance. I kept running. I saw a woman lying on the white line in the middle of the road. The breeze was moving parts of her pink dress.

I stood in the middle of the road, breathing hard from the running, and felt the heat from the asphalt on the soles of my bare feet, like standing in my grandparent’s fields. I looked down at the woman in the road. She was an older woman; she was a thin black woman dressed in her Sunday church best.

I looked both ways down the road. There were no other cars. The whole world was filled up with me and an elderly black woman in a pink dress lying like a rag doll in the middle of a road surrounded by North Carolina tobacco fields.

Then, a car came. I didn’t know it was there until I heard the door slam and a man came toward me.

“Son?” the man said. “Better get out of the road, boy. I’ll go on down to Pappy yoke’s Store and call an ambulance. You’d better get out of the road, son.”

“I know,” I said.
“You Van Robert's grandson?” the man said.

“Yessir,” I said. Now, I wanted to cry. As long as it was just me and the woman lying in the road, as long we were all there was in the world, I didn’t think about crying. But now, I wanted to cry.

“"You’d better get out of the road, son,” the man said again. “You come on with me; there ain’t nothin’ you can do for her."

“No,”" I said. “"Somebody’s got to keep the cars from running over her."

"You reckon you can handle that, boy?”"

"Yessir,"” I said.

The man looked at me and said, “I reckon you are Van Robert's grandson. You just stand on the side of the road and wave ‘’em down. There ain’t likely to be any on this road on a Sunday, and I’ll be right back."

“The store ain’t open on Sunday,” I said.

“"I know, son, but they live in back and I know your gramma ain’t got a telephone."

The man got into his car and drove toward Pappy "yoke ’s Store, but I didn’t watch him go. I didn’t watch him drive around the woman lying in the road.

Because I saw the woman’s eyes. Maybe they were closed before; maybe that’s why I didn’t see them sooner.

Her eyes were open and she was staring at me like I was the only thing in the world. Her mouth began to move, too, like she was talking. She was staring at me, her eyes wide-open and not blinking – staring at me and her mouth opening and closing. She was talking to me, but she couldn’t make the words come out.

I looked up and down the empty Sunday road; I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe just for someone to come and take this woman away, to rescue me from her staring eyes and her silent moving lips.

But, I had to look at her, to look straight back into her eyes – I had to – because I knew that if I looked away it would be like I just left her to die. So I looked back into her eyes, trembling and wanting to cry again. And her mouth kept moving. Talking to me. Telling me not to leave her. I felt that inside. I didn’t have to hear it. I knelt beside her and held her hand and would not leave her.

When I heard my grandmother holler, I jumped. For a second I guess I thought the sound came from the woman on the road. But it was my grandmother.

She was waddling down the dirt road from the house as fast as she could go. She hollered again; “”Lawd God a-mighty!” as she came, trailing little clouds of dust at her feet. My grandmother was a great fat woman with huge all-encompassing breasts and upper arms as big as a pro-wrestler’s. She could envelope the whole world, hold it all tight against those huge bosoms. “”Lawd God a-mighty!”” she yelled again, even though her mouth was bulging with snuff.

Then my grandmother stood next to me on the road, breathing hard. She put her hand on my shoulder. “”Charlie?”” she said, and I started to cry. If she hadn’t put her hand on my shoulder and called my name I would have been all right. But now I was crying.

The woman lying in the road kept looking at me, her eyes never leaving my face.

“”We got to get out of the road,”” my grandmother said.

“”No,”” I said, and my grandmother kept standing in the road beside me until the man came back from Pappy Yoke’s store. The ambulance was right behind him. The highway patrol came too and the road was full of cars, blue and red lights flashing; all gathered around the old black woman lying broken in the road in her pink dress.

They put the woman on a stretcher. She didn’t move until they rolled her into the ambulance and she turned her head a little so she could keep looking at me. I heard one of the ambulance attendants say; “Nice Chevy. Too bad she tore it up like that.” Then they were all gone. All the cars drove away and the flashing lights were gone and silence fell again, like a blanket, over the tobacco fields. Not even the sound of the dove over at the old millpond. The woman couldn’t look at me anymore.

Nobody ever taught me how to pray. But I tried to learn that night. My grandparent’s farm was nine miles from Snow Hill and at night it was swallowed in darkness. I could lie at night and hold my hand to my face, almost touching my nose, and not see it.

That night, in my feather-bed, I looked at the blackness over my head and tried to pray. “Dear God, please help that poor old negro woman,” I said. But my prayer didn’t seem to go anywhere; it just went up into the darkness over my head and disappeared.

I don’t remember how long I prayed like that. But I do remember why I stopped.
I stopped when I saw the woman’s eyes, shinning in the dark above my bed. Luminous, and staring at me. The woman’s eyes stayed in the darkness above my bed until morning; they melted away with the first dim light that seeped into my room.

I watched them all night. I could have reached up and touched them. But, I just lay there and looked back at them until morning came.

It was when the first filmy rays of light broke into my room, when things were just beginning to turn into clumps of gray, that the woman spoke to me. “”My name is Marlie Robinson,”” she said. “”You remember my name,”” she said. I said I would remember. Then the eyes and the voice were gone and the day had come.

I told my grandmother the woman’s name.

“”She tell you while she was layin' in the road?”” my grandmother said.
“”She told me,”” I said.

My grandmother didn’t know any Robinsons. She said they must be from over in Yellow Springs, or maybe Greenville.

After a while, I quit thinking about the woman. Sometimes, in high school, when I talked about her my friends laughed, punched me in the arm, and said; “”bullshit!”

But, I could close my eyes anytime I wanted to and see that pale-blue Chevrolet on its top, its wheels spinning like the legs of a bug on its back moving and trying to find the ground. I could close my eyes anytime and see the woman’s pink dress blowing in the breeze that came softly down the road that Sunday afternoon. It was a memory I would always have. And I would always have the woman’s name too. And every time I heard a dove’s cry, I remembered.

Even though I never once doubted the eyes and the woman’s voice that night were real, they never came back again. Many times I wondered why I wasn’t afraid that night. The woman’s eyes were soft and brown, with the whites of her eyes shinning bright, and her voice was soft too. – “You remember my name.” Other than that, I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid. In 2001, I went to the woman’s grave. It wasn’t hard to find, there was only one black cemetery in Yellow Springs. I took some flowers and laid them on her grave, in front of the stone that had her name carved on it.

I was wearing my uniform. I was in the Army and on my way to Iraq. I knew I would run toward death again; toward bodies tossed like rag dolls and lying broken on the ground.....I knew I was looking down at my own broken body. I looked up to see Marlie Robinson standing above me looking down at my broken body, I asked her not to leave me. I asked her to remember my name. Marlie Robinson held my hand, she never left my side.

 

Announcing the release of the new novel, Birthing the Lucifer Star

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://forms.listwire.com/7662/4810.js"></script>
My book "birthing the lucifer star is now on sale."

 

Please visit my website http://hipriestess.com/blog to read scifi sundays with the hipriestess. 

. I am selling the book on kindle, as an ebook, at amazon, lulu
and myebooks.com and you will find my book, hard copy on sale at every major bookstore.

hyperlinks: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11567
http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=27255
http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=67957

So buy my book, or promote it through amazon. If you are an amazon affiliate, you can create an amazon widget with my novel, "Birthing the Lucifer star" and post it on your website.

My deal is this, buy the book and get 15 mlm ebooks for free.

 

Birthing the Lucifer star,  Book review

Do We hear the call?? In our everyday reality, the great spirit calls us to redeem ourselves and those around us from the ruler of this world. If you heard the call, what would you choose. For many are called, but few are chosen. Those who hear and answer the call do so to the peril of their very soul. Follow the woman of the wilderness and the hero, a great warrior of the first nation, as they risk life and limb to redeem first themselves then all of turtle island...

A sparse, my...more Do We hear the call?? In our everyday reality, the great spirit calls us to redeem ourselves and those around us from the ruler of this world. If you heard the call, what would you choose. For many are called, but few are chosen. Those who hear and answer the call do so to the peril of their very soul. Follow the woman of the wilderness and the hero, a great warrior of the first nation, as they risk life and limb to redeem first themselves then all of turtle island...

A sparse, mythical writing style and complex storytelling ensure the success of D. E. Bartley's portrayal of a celebrated Native American warrior who rediscovers his divinity, and a Brooklyn daughter of Jacob who wanders the wilderness trying to answer the call.

 

EXCERPT:

 

 

 Chapter 15: Secret Bilderberger Meeting
The Lords of Belgium sat in conference, reviewing the current state of the economy around the world. Sir Rothschild was receiving the reports of his lesser chief, the royal crown of England.
"My faithful servant, what is your report?"
"Sire, I bring disturbing news from the American sector. The production targets on the flu vaccine are being met, but industrial progress is slow. Asia, meanwhile-they are much closer to their targets and have been making greater progress."
"What should I see as disturbing in that last report?"
"Sire, if you will recall, the Americans are leaderless, their President, is our puppet, so no one really takes him seriously %u2026 They have been making these improvements on their own initiative. As they clearly are outstripping India and China, where there are strong leaders in place, they are gaining pride in their own progress, their own initiative."
"I see. That could be grave. The dollar has not yet reached its intrinsic value of zero. Confidence in their own capabilities could cause them to resent the taxes and levies they pay to us %u2026 damned Americans refuse to be subservient."
"In fact, sire, there have been inquiries regarding certain levies of ours. Complaints have been made that certain line items are excessive."
"Then we need to take action. Tell me: has their progress been steady?"
"For the most part, sire, yes. However, in the last reporting period, we note a leveling out. Some discontent with this is evident in the tone of the reports; there have even been rumors that certain states want to create their own greenbacks."
"Then we have our window of opportunity."
"Sire? I don't understand."
"My faithful servant," the Lord Rothschild said, a tone of deliberate patience in his voice, "please recite for me the mantra of progressive evolution."
"Evolvement is not a steady upward curve, but is a series of steps punctuated by periods of little or no upward movement, known as plateaus. When a table is reached, it is important not to forsake the methods bringing progress, but to persevere and accumulate the incremental improvements that will finally break out of the plateau and once again bring upward mobilization."
"This is what brings us our opportunity to institute change to our benefit," the Lord Rothschild stated.
The queen was clearly perplexed. "Change, sire? I thought the mantra of progressive evolution dictated steadfastness, patience, and perseverance?"
"Recite for me the mantra of reconstruction."
The queen stood silent, at a loss. Across the table from her, Warren Buffett stood up, smiling smugly. "Reconstruction is good when instituted and controlled from above. Altering the status quo from below becomes good only when it is accepted and taken under direction from above."
"Very good, Warren; you may sit down. Now, explain how this fits the current situation."
Ben Bernanke stood, was recognized, and then spoke. "The current situation allows us to invoke the mantra of reconstruction to our advantage. We can accomplish our objectives by instituting a change of our own that will co-opt their change and bring it completely under our control."
"Most excellent, my loyal servant. I see that you, at least, have been paying attention. Put yourself in for a raise. I will approve it."
"Thank you, sire!" Bernanke wiped a tear of gratitude from the corner of his eye.
Lord Rothschild gestured, and his underlings sat down. "The Americans cannot be allowed to continue to self-govern and question our legitimate rule." He smiled coldly. "Therefore, we need to create a large enough altercation to shake their little world. The silly mass shootings being blamed on Muslims are just not viable; the Americans are seeing through these black ops. However, there will be a new sun in place by the time the current plateau is overcome, and we'll see that the credit for this incredible feat or progress falls to us. Thus, we will reassert our control, and the questioning of our levies will cease. George, when does Cassini II launch?"
"It launches in just 7 days-a most wise plan, sire," said George Herbert Walker Bush. "We will show them our power and confirm our control."
"Thank you, George. The Cassini is equipped with two tons of plutonium; we have directed the ship toward Jupiter, and hopefully the nuclear fission will be enough to create a sustainable blaze, creating a new sun. It is imperative that we get this right. Does anyone have any questions? No? Good. Then this meeting is officially adjourned."
 

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Heroe's always remember

 

I was sitting on the porch when I heard the sound of the dove come from the old millpond. The dove's mournful call stopped, and then I heard death coming down the country road that ran passed my grandparent's farm. It broke the Sunday afternoon apart and silenced the dove.

My grandmother’s name was Gloria Roberts. My grandfather was already dead by that fall, finally killed by the gas that began to eat his lungs in the trenches of France in 1918; buried with his Croix de Guerre.

My grandparents lived in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina, in a place with a name you couldn't find on a map. They lived in the midst of horizon-to-horizon tobacco fields that grew over my head; hid me in forests of green like the jungles of Tarzan, and where I ran wild, invisible to the world, feeling the hot sand of the fields between my bare toes.

I was ten year old, sitting on the porch of my grandparent’s house and dreaming a boy’s dreams, when the call of the dove stopped.

I heard screaming metal, an engine trying to tear itself apart, howling like a tortured animal. I looked toward the road. I could see the small white dot of my grandmother’s mailbox, atop its post and leaning a little to the right, on the other side of the road.

Then I saw it. It came from the left, a flash of blue. And it began to fly. If left the ground and climbed toward the sky over the tobacco fields, trying to fly over the ditch by the side of the road. The sky and the car were almost the same pale-blue color.

Halfway up the arc of its climb, the car rolled, like an airplane doing stunts. I could see the workings beneath it. They were lewd, as if the car was naked. The car seemed to hang at the top of the arc, its black belly exposed, and then it fell.

The car fell into the ditch and kicked up dirt that floated and drifted in the air around it. It landed on its top and the wheels kept spinning. The roaring engine died when the car hit the ditch and I could hear the spinning wheels. They made a rumbling and whirring sound.

I jumped off the porch and ran. I don’t know why I didn’t run to find my grandmother. She was in the garden in the back of the house, bent over her black-eyed Susan’s. But I didn’t run for her, I ran toward the upside down car, its wheels starting to slow down now, but still spinning. I was thirteen years old and I was running toward death. But I didn’t know it.

There was a breeze ruffling something; making something pink move and dance. I kept running. I saw a woman lying on the white line in the middle of the road. The breeze was moving parts of her pink dress.

I stood in the middle of the road, breathing hard from the running, and felt the heat from the asphalt on the soles of my bare feet, like standing in my grandparent’s fields. I looked down at the woman in the road. She was an older woman; she was a thin black woman dressed in her Sunday church best.

I looked both ways down the road. There were no other cars. The whole world was filled up with me and an elderly black woman in a pink dress lying like a rag doll in the middle of a road surrounded by North Carolina tobacco fields.

Then, a car came. I didn’t know it was there until I heard the door slam and a man came toward me.

“Son?” the man said. “Better get out of the road, boy. I’ll go on down to Pappy yoke’s Store and call an ambulance. You’d better get out of the road, son.”

“I know,” I said.
“You Van Robert's grandson?” the man said.

“Yessir,” I said. Now, I wanted to cry. As long as it was just me and the woman lying in the road, as long we were all there was in the world, I didn’t think about crying. But now, I wanted to cry.

“"You’d better get out of the road, son,” the man said again. “You come on with me; there ain’t nothin’ you can do for her."

“No,”" I said. “"Somebody’s got to keep the cars from running over her."

"You reckon you can handle that, boy?”"

"Yessir,"” I said.

The man looked at me and said, “I reckon you are Van Robert's grandson. You just stand on the side of the road and wave ‘’em down. There ain’t likely to be any on this road on a Sunday, and I’ll be right back."

“The store ain’t open on Sunday,” I said.

“"I know, son, but they live in back and I know your gramma ain’t got a telephone."

The man got into his car and drove toward Pappy "yoke ’s Store, but I didn’t watch him go. I didn’t watch him drive around the woman lying in the road.

Because I saw the woman’s eyes. Maybe they were closed before; maybe that’s why I didn’t see them sooner.

Her eyes were open and she was staring at me like I was the only thing in the world. Her mouth began to move, too, like she was talking. She was staring at me, her eyes wide-open and not blinking – staring at me and her mouth opening and closing. She was talking to me, but she couldn’t make the words come out.

I looked up and down the empty Sunday road; I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe just for someone to come and take this woman away, to rescue me from her staring eyes and her silent moving lips.

But, I had to look at her, to look straight back into her eyes – I had to – because I knew that if I looked away it would be like I just left her to die. So I looked back into her eyes, trembling and wanting to cry again. And her mouth kept moving. Talking to me. Telling me not to leave her. I felt that inside. I didn’t have to hear it. I knelt beside her and held her hand and would not leave her.

When I heard my grandmother holler, I jumped. For a second I guess I thought the sound came from the woman on the road. But it was my grandmother.

She was waddling down the dirt road from the house as fast as she could go. She hollered again; “”Lawd God a-mighty!” as she came, trailing little clouds of dust at her feet. My grandmother was a great fat woman with huge all-encompassing breasts and upper arms as big as a pro-wrestler’s. She could envelope the whole world, hold it all tight against those huge bosoms. “”Lawd God a-mighty!”” she yelled again, even though her mouth was bulging with snuff.

Then my grandmother stood next to me on the road, breathing hard. She put her hand on my shoulder. “”Charlie?”” she said, and I started to cry. If she hadn’t put her hand on my shoulder and called my name I would have been all right. But now I was crying.

The woman lying in the road kept looking at me, her eyes never leaving my face.

“”We got to get out of the road,”” my grandmother said.

“”No,”” I said, and my grandmother kept standing in the road beside me until the man came back from Pappy Yoke’s store. The ambulance was right behind him. The highway patrol came too and the road was full of cars, blue and red lights flashing; all gathered around the old black woman lying broken in the road in her pink dress.

They put the woman on a stretcher. She didn’t move until they rolled her into the ambulance and she turned her head a little so she could keep looking at me. I heard one of the ambulance attendants say; “Nice Chevy. Too bad she tore it up like that.” Then they were all gone. All the cars drove away and the flashing lights were gone and silence fell again, like a blanket, over the tobacco fields. Not even the sound of the dove over at the old millpond. The woman couldn’t look at me anymore.

Nobody ever taught me how to pray. But I tried to learn that night. My grandparent’s farm was nine miles from Snow Hill and at night it was swallowed in darkness. I could lie at night and hold my hand to my face, almost touching my nose, and not see it.

That night, in my feather-bed, I looked at the blackness over my head and tried to pray. “Dear God, please help that poor old negro woman,” I said. But my prayer didn’t seem to go anywhere; it just went up into the darkness over my head and disappeared.

I don’t remember how long I prayed like that. But I do remember why I stopped.
I stopped when I saw the woman’s eyes, shinning in the dark above my bed. Luminous, and staring at me. The woman’s eyes stayed in the darkness above my bed until morning; they melted away with the first dim light that seeped into my room.

I watched them all night. I could have reached up and touched them. But, I just lay there and looked back at them until morning came.

It was when the first filmy rays of light broke into my room, when things were just beginning to turn into clumps of gray, that the woman spoke to me. “”My name is Marlie Robinson,”” she said. “”You remember my name,”” she said. I said I would remember. Then the eyes and the voice were gone and the day had come.

I told my grandmother the woman’s name.

“”She tell you while she was layin' in the road?”” my grandmother said.
“”She told me,”” I said.

My grandmother didn’t know any Robinsons. She said they must be from over in Yellow Springs, or maybe Greenville.

After a while, I quit thinking about the woman. Sometimes, in high school, when I talked about her my friends laughed, punched me in the arm, and said; “”bullshit!”

But, I could close my eyes anytime I wanted to and see that pale-blue Chevrolet on its top, its wheels spinning like the legs of a bug on its back moving and trying to find the ground. I could close my eyes anytime and see the woman’s pink dress blowing in the breeze that came softly down the road that Sunday afternoon. It was a memory I would always have. And I would always have the woman’s name too. And every time I heard a dove’s cry, I remembered.

Even though I never once doubted the eyes and the woman’s voice that night were real, they never came back again. Many times I wondered why I wasn’t afraid that night. The woman’s eyes were soft and brown, with the whites of her eyes shinning bright, and her voice was soft too. – “You remember my name.” Other than that, I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid. In 2001, I went to the woman’s grave. It wasn’t hard to find, there was only one black cemetery in Yellow Springs. I took some flowers and laid them on her grave, in front of the stone that had her name carved on it.

I was wearing my uniform. I was in the Army and on my way to Iraq. I knew I would run toward death again; toward bodies tossed like rag dolls and lying broken on the ground.....I knew I was looking down at my own broken body. I looked up to see Marlie Robinson standing above me looking down at my broken body, I asked her not to leave me. I asked her to remember my name. Marlie Robinson held my hand, she never left my side.

 

Scifi sundays presents "Maiden Voyage"

Maiden Voyage

 

Nicco was nervous coming to New York City” rel=”geolocation”>New York for the first time. The club was packed,
Kings, queens, fags and hags, wall to wall gayness. Nicco was excited, this was
His maiden voyage to a Gay club in the heart of the big Apple. Dressed up, for
The very first time, Nicco headed for the ‘ladie’s room to make sure his makeup
Hadn’t run, and that he still looked the femme fatale. He strolled into the bathroom
And spotted Adrian. He was much older than Nicco, but he was breathtakingly
Beautiful.

Not pretty. Not lovely. Gorgeous. Glamour, mystererious, the whole nine yards. Stately, stunning—all the sexy things a woman wantsed to be…and Adrian was a guy, which almost made Nicico hate “her” more. Nicco was taken by her stunning beauty, and knew that’s what he wanted to be too. Thrash was a gay bar—and there was something great about the place—tribal. Ecstatic. It was a converted church in the middle of the city—he felt reverence— he worshipped the fact that he was smack dab in the middle of wonderland—MEN everywhere—beautiful men—and it didn’t matter that they were there for each other. He was in on a pass—his friends were happy to dance with him, talk, whatever.

Thrash was safe. No rapists, no weirdos. Just Nicco and 500 he-shes. The she-hes had their own enclave there—but he didn’t dress right, didn’t give off the vibe—to them he was invisible—or maybe a fag hag—but in any event—they kept away. He didn’t see Adrian
again till the third rum and coke hit. So He left to drain the dragon.
Off to the ladies room, which wasn’t for women only—at the Gay clubs that was never a given.

And there she sat—–before the vanity mirror.
PERFECT. Raven hair, pouty red mouth just waiting to be kissed, dark eyes that whispered secrets of sin—and doing things in a red satin dress that would have gotten “her” arrested in Utah. Oh man…blow to his fragile 20 year old ego. How could a man be more beautiful than a woman? But he-she was.

There was the barest flicker of eye contact…a polite nod, and he was back out again. The party was just beginning…Cher’s…’gypsies tramps and thieves’…it was safe sex for him—dancing with those writhing men, reveling in their macho postures, presented with grace and pure rut. He loved men—and it did not matter that he was not looking for a lover. Here he could just enjoy the raw male power of the place. But there was Adrian…making him feel perfectly shoddy. Like an imposter. It had taken three looks to know her for what she was. No hiding the wrist structure—or the ankles…but all the rest…a perfect ten, drag queen extraordinaire.

And he knew she hadn’t gone for the surgery either. It takes a lot of balls to have your Johnson removed….This one was fully equipped—and still managed to pull off the female thing better than Nicco could with his flimsy first attempt. But what was she doing in the ladies room? There was a club full of guys who would have squired her as readily as they did him—a fact that remained a mystery, but a happy one. In the straight world, Nicco was always second choice—or even third. Here he was the belle of the ball…his choice of dance partners. Here his every word was a witty gem, and the circle of laughter followed him like a halo. he loved these men—for making him feel more gloriously like a woman then any “normal” man ever had.

But there was Adrian…on his second visit to the ladies room, he found she still sat, gazing in the vanity mirror, searching for some flaw—one small line marring the forehead—Nicco touched up his make up—which was running to ruin because he was dancing like he always had wanted to—and never had. Sweat was making it run off, and while he wasn’t hunting, looking good was a simple matter of pride , he didn’t just want to play the part, he wanted to feel the part.

Gary and Allan had warned him about bitch queens—and he had met a few…but Adrian seemed a perfectly harmless drag queen. The guys told him, Adrian was a house boy . Was he supposed to speak to her or not? If he did, was he crashing a fantasy? Hard to tell. He went back out to the boys—more dancing—more laughter as they spun the kid like a disco princess, and fought over who would partner him next…and strangely—He found his eyes going back again to that ladies room door. Surely she did not mean to stay there all night?

Miguel spun Nicco wild—-a mistake on such a crowded dance floor—and sent him careening into a man—he was dressed in a suit—unusual for that place. He smiled into Nicco’s eyes, nodded, and asked him to dance. Miguel and Allan danced together for a slow number—so there seemed no good reason not to…and all around him men danced slowly in each others arms…teasing each other—even kissing…a sight Nicco found profoundly erotic. he darted his eyes away, feeling like he intruded with his glance—but could not help but stare. It was sweet, sexy sensual, but with raw male power.

He did not know the gentleman’s name, and when he bent close, Nicco thought he meant to tell him—but instead his mouth came down hard on his mouth, and he could taste scotch on his tongue. He proceeded to bite Nicco’s lip, not quite unwelcome, it was still unexpected. He was still quite naive, and might have drawn back—but his hands shot down Nicco’s pants holding him, there….. as he kissed deeper—finally sucking in the lip and holding it between his teeth.

Nicco was completely unnerved. This was something that he never experienced, He did not want the boys to think he was poaching…and it was three minutes before the guy released his penis…grabbing Nicco’s nail polished hand instead.

“You are mine tonight.” he whispered, the accent faint—perhaps Russian…and Nicco’s throat went dry—not with excitement, but fear. His lip throbbed, and whatever this guy’s thing was, he was pretty certain he was not near experienced, nor exotic enough for his taste.

“Ladies room.” Nicco whispered …and he held his hand right to the door. He got inside, then leaned against it, feeling faintly sick. Trapped? In a gay bar? How the hell had that happened?

He looked up, and saw Adrian studying him in the glass. She spoke low—

“Hey kid—you’re being chased huh? He’s a beast that one, you won’t walk for a week.”

Nicco nodded, shaken.

“Well girl—there’s no back door here. You’re gonna have to leave sometime—we can’t talk panty hose and popping cherries until 4:30 a.m ….”she said calmly.

“No. Guess we can’t.” Nicco said, crestfallen. His posture was sagging, he felt he was a pretty poor excuse for a woman—no wiles, no gumption, just an 18 year old kid trying on a skirt, blouse makeup and some ikipedia.org/wiki/Pantyhose” title=”Pantyhose” rel=”wikipedia”>pantyhose.

“Tell you what little girl…” she said, not unkindly. “I’ll help you out. You’ll only have a minute…find your friends and run. The one who’s waiting for you—he’s a mean bastard. He likes it hard. He’s a top, and he knows you’re a bottom, he’ll take more than your
cherry, look! your lip is turning purple, so I know you already had a taste. And it doesn’t much look like you enjoyed it.”

She stood—breathtaking—tossed her hair over her shoulder, shook the mane of curls—and started moving for the door in a haze of Opium fumes.
Nicco needed to say something—anything less lame than thank you—-

“You are beautiful.” Nicco stammered, and looked down. Adrian froze—one elegant hand reaching for the door handle. Those dark eyes sized him up—looking for something nasty—sarcasm? But he wasn’t lying. She was…but somehow just didn’t know it. It took him years to realize how he almost ruined that beautiful makeup—but then he did not understand the tears that suddenly flooded her eyes. She fought them back, reached out, and hugged him…

“Be careful Little sister,” she whispered. “Look out for the sado masochists, they bite hard.”

A moment later, she walked out…and sure enough, the sensation she caused gave Nicco a chance to run. He found Gary, dragged Allan away, and we headed back toward Jersey.. They told had that Adrian had done something very special—she spent the whole night in that ladies room every time—emerging just before the closing to pick a lover for the night. Her early arrival had given me a chance to bolt—now she would be pestered by every man in the place until closing.

Miguel looked at him a moment, when Nicco told him what he said.

“Well, she hates you—but she loves you too. NO matter how good she looks, she knows she’s only a queen—small “Q”. She can fool the boys—but you’re a wannabe. You gave her validation. Tonight she was a Queen—large Q. Good job girl—or man—look at your lip!”

And so ended Nicco’s maiden voyage in to the belly of the beast. His fat lip, proof that he had the courage to go through with his fantasy. They Drove over the Pulaski bridge and stopped at the Skyway diner, they were starving, Nicco no longer cared about his make-up and had cleaned most of the makeup off and put on a dingy pair of blue jeans, and a t-shirt. They walked into the Diner and took a booth in the back, ordering who knows what, they were all pretty inebriated. Nicco got up to use the little boy’s room, back in the real world, he entered the stall, and was immediately grabbed and thrown to the floor…..Nicco couldn’t see, whoever it was, had pulled the t shirt over his head, he felt his pants being torn open….

“No one leaves me in the lurch, queenie…..”
 

The first whispered word

The First whispered Word



A long time ago, when the world was naked, and all that was, were the deep sea life that ruled the air and the heights, I met my friend- my closest friend. He was a water eel named Slither, though the things then had no names, I gave him one, just to make frequent conversation a little less of a hassle. slither was proud of his scales and the speed he owned in the water. His reflection was golden and you could hear his call rolling miles away. It took him a day once just to gather up the nerve to let himself down from his rocks. He was proud and knew the golden sunshine wouldnt strike his back if he lay back down in the water with me. So he waited all day till night came and that's when he jumped. I never knew an eel could jump and so high too. He could jump to the top of the sky, and he owned wherever he could reach. The phrase seems uncommon around these parts; a jumping eel. Back then we had no phrases or names. Just slither and jump. And something that came out of my mouth one morning.

"Psssst! Slither was unimpressed. That's just because he was jealous and prideful; he was an eel in the water, so he couldn't say things like me. I had those ruby slippers on, that tied themselves when you didn't feel like it - they bounced on water like lily pads. Slither rode me on his back some hours afterward. I would lie there and he would swim for another rock to conquer. I had dreams that I was on a dirt mound, even though in those days we had no dirt. I had those dreams and often thought about someone whispering in my ear, thinking I was he and he was I. And he'd tell me a secret. Though we didn't have secrets in those days.

I couldn't breath underwater; that's mostly what slither could do that I couldn't. He was quicker in the ocean than I. This made him act all the more big, electrifying. I had a big heart so I let him slide. He asked me not to say the new word that came out my mouth in the mornings. He said it irritated him. Yet slithering eels didn't say things in those days, I just knew what he was thinking from the way he looked at the water as he swam with me on his back. I had just woken up from the secret sharing dream, and thus my body did something that felt all too natural and unstoppable. I had tried not to let slither hear it those past few days, so as not to hurt his pride. Yet that day, I felt if I didnt I might never be able to take another breath. I breathed in deep and then my lungs belted out, great and loud, "pssst!"

"Hmpf," thought Slither, "That's it."

He swam furiously to some far away rocks. Farther than I'd ever been. They were isolated amidst the deep blue. Slither frowned back at me and flipped me off his back and swam away. He swam underwater, as if to cleanse himself from my weight. He popped up every so often; for he couldn't exactly breathe underwater, just hold his breath for that long.

I sat there on the rocks after floating up and down in the water, watching the eel slither and race towards the horizon. The sun shined golden on my back. Yes, Slither had given that up - one pride for another. Yet no one could control either of those things. The sun shined on me just as it did on him. Yet he felt he deserved it more. And I pssst just as naturally as he swam, yet he wanted it all with me left speechless adrift, near some rocks far away from his own so no one could hear me. He could tell himself that the pssst didnt exist. That my red shoes didn't tie themselves and that dreams about telling secrets never occur, and if they did were of no great importance. He could keep his pride because all the whales and sea life had nothing to spout. He was on the rocks in the sunshine. He swam the fastest. Slither, with no friends, had no one to make him feel like less of a watery eel. And he took to the dust, because he could not say pssst, in the water, he had to crawl on his belly in the dust.

I got irritated on those stupid rocks in the middle of nowhere. I remembered Slither waiting all day so the sunshine got all of him - not the other way around. I remembered him jumping and how that was a word, even though we didn't have vocabulary or the alphabet back in those days. I bet if Slither could spell jump, or sunshine or even rocks, he'd spell it just like this and in this punctuation too, though we didn't have punctuation back in those days of my ruby slippers and the prideful watery eel- he'd spell it all like this: Pssst.



But pssst. He wouldn't notate or spell or punctuate 'pssst' like that. Not psst. Because as far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as that new word that came by way of my mouth one morning. He wouldn't think of it at all. He'd just smile because now he could slowly forget, and think himself golden again.

I got off those rocks. Remember my shoes, how they bounced on the water like lily pads? They took me far to a place where all the water came from. I walked until my feet could touch the lower end of the ocean and some how everyone found land. All the whales were on the beaches now, forming hind legs and fingers to hold tobacco pipes. The sea life took to the air. All the watersnails that used to lose all the races had a fiery sugary strut. It was long and indulging and it looked quicker than sap. Most of the fish had legs to go along with their cursive stingers. There came birds and dinosaurs and furry mosquitoes.
Though the golden eel, slither, was no longer apt in the water. In fact I don't believe anything was anymore. Everything hurried along now on the shore with a new dynamic, that the sea seemed like a roadway with a 10 car highway wreck right threw it, slowing down traffic, though we didn't have traffic or roadways back in those days.

Slither tried the land. He stepped into the dirt and the sand and the leaves. The watersnails passed him by with their fiery sugar slide struts they would do. He was embarrassed. He could not be fast anymore. He was the slowest thing on land.

"The watery eel, the golden eel," the snails teased, (the snails couldn't really talk, back in those days) "has no more a gift of sunshine. He has lost his quickness of speed and pride." So Slither sat back up on the rocks. He told himself all was still golden. He didn't dare let many more know of his secret. He never moved from his mount, so the reality of the thing was no longer engaged. He could continue spelling all words as 'jump'. Though never pssst.

I forgave Slither for abandoning me, and I didn't tease him for anything. I guess he just kept thinking things were the same. He never moved, so he never showed his flaws, at least not out in the open. Never did a man have a body like a watery eel, or swim like a torrent. We left him a reason to feel it. Though never did a slithering eel have the treat of dreaming and waking up and having a secret to share, free a new word into morning. I needed no rush or hurry for the sun's grace, or for that secret to know me. That is where my pssst had come from. There was a dawning deep inside, and that is why I had awoken. This is why I feel golden.

The watery eel took to the land because he sacrificed feeling golden, so he could whisper 'pssst.'

Screwed and Tatooed on Scifi Sundays

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He trudged along the crags of the abandoned shore, wounds now opened from his bare feet scraping on the jagged rocks. The sunlight washed over him, as the crashing waves did not. He walked slowly yet with purpose, with determination. Sometimes he wondered why he was so driven, why did he walk this long road? He supposed ... it was just what he had always done. There is a certain momentum in being obsessive compulsive, a certain cleansing as in a ritual.

As he wandered along the beach, surrounded by the light of the sun over the waves, he thought about his journey. Ever walking upon this beach, as if time stood still, the sun ever upon the horizon. His only clues that he was not in some eternal stasis with an unchanging landscape that may have been painted upon some wall, were the waves regularly crashing upon the shore, and his own presence here.

He felt the marks upon his flesh, scars of the past, a part of him now. A burden he bore as if the titan Atlas, holding up the world. He reflected upon that metaphor. No, he did not carry the world, just the torment of one man. He knew he was enslaved in this infernal system, he had been branded, he wore the Mark of Cain, he had received the mark of the beast, given to him by his master, he had been pierced through like the Eunichs of some Ancient civilisation.

... He stomped on now with purpose.

He could feel the essence of each tattoo seep into his very being. Were they merely representations of tribulation, or something more ... malevolent? He was branded now, forever marked, the emblems took on a life of their own as they seeped into the seven layers of his epidermis, seeking expression in his consciousness.

The Serpent. He felt it coiling around his left bicep, fangs sinking deep. He remembered the burning green venom of jealousy and possessiveness, flooding through his blood. His heart ached with the memory of a love he had lost to that bitter poison. Her once caring words twisted with hate. The serpent blameless - it was he who had embraced it; how could he not expect to be punctured by its bite?

The Scorpion. The black widow stung him each time he orgasmed, each time he had made love, he suffered the little death., the venomous stinger striking him at the height of passion. On his right shoulder the wrathful arachnid danced her dance of death - gleefully wallowing in an orgy of destruction and gruesome stinging. He remembered the state he had sunk to, more beast than man, base urges fostered by hatred of the world, yet still more hatred of himself. He had revelled in the excesses that such an animalistic soul brings, and she was ever present to administer instant Karma.

The barbed wire. Weighing down his biceps, his ankles with their shackles. The barbed wire draped over his collarbone and neck like a noose. He wished he could loosen their hold upon him, shift some of the weight, but being tattooed into his flesh this was a futile hope. The weight of guilt upon his soul, the terrible things he had done, the people who had suffered, for he could never make amends. That was why he walked so slowly, the weight not only of his own pain, but the pain of others.

The Skull and bones. The skeletal reminder of what we all become, a strangely cute depiction of death, but of a dark majesty, a creature of putrefaction. Staring out into the world from his back, riding him with its malignant power, like some twisted loa and its slave of chevaux. Taking him over with thoughts and feelings of abject fright and terror, sending tendrils of dread into his very being. The fear to act, to make a mistake, to fail. It seemed far better to hesitate, procrastinate, be passive - let everything happen without him. An observer impartial, always blameless, yet also guilty by omission. And the skull and bones, had spread its corruption through him, claimed a piece of his soul.

The Unquenchable Flames. Flickering upon his shins, sending spirals of smoke, they would burn him, . Burning him with its perpetual combustion, to slake it's thirst upon his flesh. Its seductive voice of apathy and self-annihilation calling out to him to abandon his journey, to end this torment called Life. As he endured, day by day, the unrelenting suffering, the pull of the flames, grew stronger. He did not know how much more he could resist.

He looked out to the sea, The most recent Tattoo still scabbed upon the swollen skin. The bleeding heart, pierced through with a stilleto, dripping blood. He stared down at his chest, and realized the blood dripping from the knife was real. He put his finger to it, and wiped the blood from his chest, . The restless spectre beckoned him to seek his peace in the waters. He sat upon the rocky shore, the sun setting, and watched as he started to bleed from the barbed wire, his eyes grew dim with the pain, the Scorpion now stinging him with her last breath, the serpent squeezing the breath out of him as it tightened it's hold around his neck.She had been there for an ageless time, ever beckoning him to her. And in her eyes, there was no hate, no reproach, no anger. Just torment, and he knew she mirrored the torment within himself. The tortured spirit merely wanted them both to be at peace.

Upon the back of his hand a single red rose, He kissed it, his very last breath taken as he stared at a thing of beauty, his last act, claiming this joy forever.

The Other

His name was Jesus. Julia Alvarez called her son E man u el, making a chant out of the four syllables. She said his name as if it were a chain of prayer. A holy benediction. A promise to God. Made it seem he had numerous names, each more wonderful than the last. In her drunken stupors she would dream that Emmanuel was Christ come again, to save her and lift her from the pits of an alcoholic's hell. Not Catholic thinking, but the Booze had its own god and its own canticles.

Then Julia "found" Jesus. Good Catholics weren't born again, they were always saved. However, it had taken everybody's Gods to finally get through to Julia Alvarez. She had been a crack whore when some junkie impregnated her, and had remained one for years, riding the needle to her own oblivion - one that never included time or attention for her sacred son.

Reverend Robertson Dollar came to town, set up a revival room in an old building once occupied by a grocery store owned by a Korean couple who were killed for $11.00 and a case of Coors. This tin cup preacher man, with his golden hair and pretty face came through the barrio with his spiel about grace and forgiveness. Right there in that filthy storefront church Julia had embraced the man's salvation story, as later she would embrace the man.

Preacher Man had promised to take her away from the utter poverty and misery of her situation - then beat it out of town without a word of goodbye or explanation, probably deeply shamed by his succumbing to the fruits of the flesh; more likely spooked by Julia's sudden upward reach on the scale of the converted. Jesus heard that during one of the Reverend's holy "fires" Julia had stood up shaking and filled with holy spirit; her proclamation - that Jesus was poor in His lifetime, so money meant nothing. Some seekers needed only that tiny chance to weaken and hold their wallets shut as the basket was passed from one to another.

Most itinerate preachers were hap-tic in their ministries, laying on hands and sifting through the donation basket to fondle the fruit of their ministries.

Holy redemption turned Julia to the absolute holy of holies. She became what all converted become, whether those giving up smoking or losing weight or finding religion, they were now pure and harangued everyone, demanding they give over to Jesus and be saved, or to go on a diet or throw away those demon smokes, or lie in the bowels of hell.

Oddly enough the abrupt departure of the preacher did nothing to cause Julia to backslide or blink herself awake to her old reality. Jesus figured once the preacher had faded to a memory thin as an addict's resolve, his mother would revert to her old self. That day never came.

She drove Jesus crazy, pouncing on him the minute, no, the nano-second he came awake. Exposing her needle tracks and scars from a hundred ulcerations, Julia pleaded and begged for Jesus to see the light.

When he had all he could take he would shout at her, "Mama, its fine for you, this business, but it aint right for me. I aint done nothing so bad. . . as all . . ."

The sound of Julia's meaty hand against her son's cheek was the slap of meat on saddle leather. Jesus had endured her beatings when he was young, but Julia knew that would be the last time she slapped her son. Hate drew his face into a pucker and his eyes warned her off.

"Emmanuel, I . . . oh, man, I didnt mean to do that. But I worry about your immortal soul." Julia knew she stood close to an edge she never wanted to cross, and she was genuinely contrite as she moved out of the range of his retaliation.

"Ma . . . you keep your crazy shit to yourself. You got two other sons and they both in Jail. Your daughter services half of this end of town. I aint never done nothin to even get in juvie. Why can't you be proud of me, Mama?"

Jesus had only seen his mother twice more as she evolved in her fanaticism, preaching and raising her Bible in his face. Jesus began staying out more and more, reluctant to face her raging religious mania. He tried living at home, just staying out until the old broad was asleep, but the times he had tried that, she had come in and shook him awake, ranting endlessly, spittle running down her pockmarked jaundiced skin.

In later times Jesus would come to wonder if what happened to him had been tilted into being because of Julia.

There was no gang for Jesus. His runty body was twisted with the aftermath of a stroke from being born addicted. Jesus wasn't exactly ugly, he was slack-jawed and blinked as if the passage of the world was more of a mystery than he could fathom. Most kids thought he was retarded, so they never bothered to include him.
Most of the young men in the barrio were razor-tempered and always trying to fight someone. Jesus had seen Juan Johnson slice a kid to ribbons for getting mud on Juan's shoes. Juan was a walking bludgeon of attitude. His mother, Carmella had married a white man, and proudly took his name. Since he was old enough to go to school Juan had to fight those kids ignorant enough to tease him about being Juan Johnson. "Is your old man Howard Johnson?" They would shout at him day after day.
Jesus had watched Juan administer a dozen quick savage plunges of the knife, followed by an ululation of sheer joy at the savagery. Patterns of blood spatter had given Jesus's face the look of someone who had cried the crimson into place. Londi and the other wetbacks panicked when they saw the speckled emptiness of Jesus's face.

"Jesus, watched. We gotta do him too."

Juan sauntered over to Jesus, taking off his do-rag and almost tenderly wiping the blood away. "This guy ain't seen shit - have you, buddy? Jesus ain't like a real person. He's re-tarded." Juan slipped his arm around Jesus's neck, snug enough to get the boy's attention, and whispered, "Now, my man, we're tight, right? Sure we are. So you ain't gonna mention this to anyone are you?" Jesus stood still with his empty face and stared at a point that could have been across the street or on another continent.

Inside himself Jesus was not retarded, he knew. But the speech problem left to him from the stroke kept him silent. No one had ever heard him utter more than a word or two, each word drooled out rather than spoken. Jesus would not tell, he wanted no interplay with the world he was forced to live within.

Now when he could have used a friend with a crib to offer him a corner to sleep in, Jesus had nowhere to turn. He began sleeping in whatever hole he could find or make. Not doorways, cops rousted those guys, but inside fruity-foul smelling packing crates or abandoned buildings, and often the stalls of rancid, disease ridden bathroom stalls of the subway system.

He had first slept sitting up on benches, hoping the security guy wouldn't roust him. They rousted him and good, leaving a bloody landscape that had once been his face. Jesus figured it was like that "kick the cat" thing - where some loser made himself feel better by making a loser of some other poor guy.

He took to being crafty, finding a nook or cranny that was hidden from view, but the bulls found him there too. After a particularly enthusiastic, convincing "lesson" the cop dragged him to the main doors and kicked his legs out from under him, then he tossed Jesus into some nearby bushes, where he lay dazed and barely conscious for hours. Finally opening his eyes, Jesus saw a pair of eyes watching him - eyes that seemed at best, other-worldly.


First thing Jesus thought was that the guy was all twisted and deformed, but when he opened his eyes the next time he saw that the guy was a just a typical bum squatting over his body, smelling of waste and despair. Yet there was something about those eyes, some scary something that leapt out and slithered along Jesus's chest, constricting his breath.
Without a movement so much as an eyelash blinking, the bum stared at Jesus, as if not understanding his stillness. As if waiting to see what other amazing thing Jesus might do. As if species seeing species - were not the same species at all.
Rising, the bum lifted Jesus as easily as you would lift a baby. Fear spiked through Jesus, but the beating had been savage and he slipped into unconsciousness, welcoming the dark.

When Jesus woke up, it was to more darkness, deep and silky-silent. Not even the breathing of the bum disturbed the absolute absence of sound. Maybe the guy had robbed him and gone away. All he had was a twenty-dollar bill he had been hoarding since his mother has begun to slip away from reality. He couldnt even command his arm to reach for his pocket. Ennui wrapped tightly around him, like a burial cloth.

From his left something rose once more, with a shiver of sound as faint as if it came from the reaches of space and time. Startled, Jesus tried to force his blind eyes to see. But nothing came within his vision and he wondered dumbly if the guard had hit his head with that nightstick hard enough to take sight away from him forever.

Unsure of the unseen presence he could now hear, Jesus lay still of his own volition, afraid a wrong move might end his life. That prospect didnt frighten him at all, he had seen the world and it had cut him off like a wart that spoiled the visage of the whole. But Jesus didn't want more pain, didnt want to survive only to be tortured by someone in that tomb-like darkness.

He drifted into and out of awareness for a long time, or so it seemed to him. Then he woke to a blue light that did not waver or burn. Its luminescence softened the concrete walls of the place where he lay and without thinking Jesus searched for another person, forgetting to be afraid. Some few feet away was a hunched figure. It wavered in the still light, seeming to drift from one shape to another. A trick of light, Jesus knew.

Jesus's world was black and blue, just like his pummeled skin. He couldnt distinguish himself from the surroundings, or from the figure still hunched in the corner. As he watched a hum began, much like a piece of machinery starting up quietly. When he realized it came from the bum, Jesus knew real panic for the first time. He had absorbed all the world had tossed to him, barely feeling a prickle of emotion, but this hum cut through his dense shell and he began to cry silently.

Suddenly the bum was over him, as if Jesus had slept through the movement of the other. It touched his eyes and Jesus slipped away from himself and let the darkness claim him before he had to face what was now his fate. Jesus awoke several more times, but always to darkness now. No blue light shone in the cavern where he lay. Fear and pain were his companions. Entities that he understood and knew made him still alive, regardless of the source of each twinge.

A sound roused jesus. It was a voice that spoke not into the blank air, but into Jesuss very brain it seemed. "Tell me," It rasped.

"Tell you what, dude?" He had spoken without thinking and the sound of his voice bounced off the walls.
Tell me, it repeated and a collage of images raged through Jesus's brain, everything. The word was not a concrete thing, but more a concept that Jesus immediately understood.

"You tell me where the hell I am and what you want. . .then maybe Ill tell you something." He lay rigid, afraid, but excited at the same time. This bum wasnt your average boozer or stoner. No, Jesus thought to himself, this . . . this whatever it was nothing that jesus had encountered before. He was immediately aware that he thought of it as it - not he.
The shifting pile of strangeness did something that brought back the blue light; Jesus was grateful for its comfort. He was freezing and had soiled his pants, the smell putrid to his own nostrils. Pain from his wounds pounded him with a heavy hammer. Again it rearranged itself, but did not approach Jesus.

Instead a series of images sluiced through Jesus's mind, elusive and slipping by too quickly to grasp. Then he shivered with the cold and fear and immediately he heard, "Tell me."

Never retarded, jesus was actually many more notches up the IQ scale than anyone would have believed. He got it. It wanted to know about the shivering. Once again pictures flared through his mind, confirming that was what knowledge it sought.

"Cause Im freezing, man," Jesus said aloud. He could almost feel the questions in his head. It had no idea what freezing was, and this thought captured his imagination as well as scared him more than anything he could ever remember.
Deciding to try to communicate through his mind, Jesus did so without thought or wonder at the exchange. He had to try several times to define heat or its absence. His companion appeared to absorb concepts rather than words and it made it easier for Jesus to get his point across.
All at once it shivered in its corner and whether through the excitement of comprehension or mimic, Jesus wasnt sure. But the blue light now pulsed, emitting sudden and welcome heat. Jesus felt the others question forming in his brain and he shouted, yes!
At first the light blued to cobalt intensity, causing Jesus to send images of too hot. Then it mellowed to a blue of cornflowers and Manny sent warmer images. Suddenly it seemed to grasp the concept of degrees of warmth and cold, and the blue light adjusted to a comfortable faded navy. Manny was spent and drifted off to a more peaceful sleep.


Chapter Three

No one missed Jesus. Maybe Julia missed her son a bit because Jesus was the one who went to the store and figured out the bills. Each month he would make out a tidy budget for her disability check, giving her only what was left over so she kept a roof over her head. Then when she was dope sick Jesus would boost to buy her a fix.

Boosting was risky. Jesus would go into the store and casually fill a basket with items - and then stroll out the door without paying for them. In a busy store no one had time to decide who had paid and who hadn't. Then Jesus would take the stuff to the dope man and be given a dime-bag for his mother.

Now Jesus laid in its dark lair, answering its concept questions and trying to teach it to use spoken language. That concept was one the other could not grasp. Jesus never once questioned the fact that this stranger was really strange, because for the first time in his life Jesus felt smart and useful. A voracious curiosity nagged him to find out more and more.

Up in her untidy apartment that smelled of garlic and aging woman, Julia Alvarez had fallen into a netherworld of her own. Convinced she was sanctified and holy, the woman's eyes grew bright and wild, her voice strident and her mannerisms holier-than-thou. She had gone to church services in several area churches and cathedrals, standing up to spout her personal beliefs and urge the others to come to Jesus.

UnfortunatelyJulia was so busy preaching the Alvarez method of getting to heaven that she took no time for cleanliness or hygiene, soon becoming a rival for John the Baptist in fervor and dishevelment. She would not attend services at Holy Redeemer. Father Gilchrist was on her list of subversives and all-around troublemakers. Julia had gone to him when she first was saved, telling him about the miracle in her life. The good Father was not impressed. He was implacable. The Holy See had never condoned the theory that the itinerant preachers spouted. Father Gilchrist was a hard-line Catholic who had blessed Julia at her dedication. That was plenty good enough for him.

Before long Julia had developed paranoia that cemented her bones in place. They were jealous and out to get her. Satan had sent his minions to torment her and cause others to ridicule and reject her. At the same time she was crashing off heroin. Had never given it another thought after being saved. The results were not typical of heroin withdrawal, however they manifested themselves there was no real comparison. Julia's slide into madness was a new cure for addiction, one that threw her into a frenzy and bouts of destructiveness. The apartment began to look like something from another dimension. Sparkling bits of broken glass littered the piles of excrement where Julia had dropped them, too deep in her swampy mind to even realize what she was doing.
Julia Alvarez had slipped so far into the alien and insane that no one came to check on her, or even called. They were not willing to listen to Julia's ranting and her foul temper that had come out of nowhere. They all told themselves they needn't worry or see about her, Jesus was a good son, he would take care of her.


Six-year old Emily Hanson was wedged under slabs of wood that crumbled with decay at her every move. As still as death itself, she waited. When she at last fell asleep, thumb tightly corked into rosebud mouth, she left the zone of FEAR.

That her hiding place was filthy and smelled of urine made no difference to her. This was her safest haven. This was safe from him. He waited to welcome her onto his lap that was hard with something she didn't quite understand. At first he had just wanted her to slide her bottom around on his lap. In the throes of his orgasm, he would grab her waist, pushing up with the hard thing until it wet her panties. He would hold her there, sometimes starting all over again.
Emily's mother Jackie was nuts, at least that's what her daddy said. Jackie stayed in her room rubbing her swollen fingers over a statue of Elvis, which was the base of a lamp that trickled murky gloom over the immediate area of its range. Jackie rarely called for Emily, and the child was fine with that. Visits meant smothering hugs and tearful apologies that only confused Emily.

Late at night she could hear her parents screaming at each other. Her daddy called her mommy a frigid bitch, nut case, loser. Her mommy's replies were unintelligible, just gasps that rose in pitch to a level where they stopped and her sobs replaced the other noises. Six year-old girls grasped concepts that adults were sure were their milieu alone. Emily knew her mom didn't want to do the sex thing with Paul, her father, so Paul did it anyway.

The first time he pulled Emily onto his lap she was three years-old. He fumbled with her ruffled panties and slid her around on his lap. He never took out the thing, so she had no idea what it looked like, just that it felt like a rod so big it could hurt little girls.
Now hiding was Emily's only choice. Daddy had begun opening his zipper and sliding her tiny hand over the thing. If she tried to pull away, her father would bend her arm in a way that the arm wasn't designed to go; pain ripping through her shoulder.

Then he began to insert his hairy-knuckled fingers between her legs, at the bad place. Emily didn't know why it was bad, but she knew. Her conception of Daddy's thrusting finger rubs made her feel her place was bad. "Now, dont that feel good, honeypie?" He'd always ask.

It did not, it hurt. It filled her with numb dread. She was dimly aware that the current play would go on to something else, a something she didn't know but its evil squeezed at her heart. So she hid. Never in the same place twice, until she found this hole. He couldn't find her here because there was a little metal wall she wriggled behind that kept her out of view. It smelled like poo poo and things crawled between her legs - but better them than her father's rough, demanding fingers. It's there she met the Other, this thing that promised her peace in her short lived life, it understood her and started to absorb her through symbiosis.


There they were, a crippled trinity, each part unaware of the other, but destined nonetheless to completing each others circle of being. One dervish twirling them all, swirled them around as a stick stirs paint, making a new pigment.

Jesus was changing. He didn't know how, with his limited scope of knowledge, he just accepted all on dumb faith. Or with the perspective of one who lived under the assumption that whatever came his way, he deserved. Not one thought of self-preservation bit at his cheek, no resistance flared in the soul of one crushed by life and by society. Taught well his worthlessness, Jesus was a sponge.

The Other was like pollution, he knew deep in his little-used brain. It was poison, but pretty poison with a fascinating web to spin around Jesus. He would never know that the Other was the strangest thing that ever inhabited the earth. Both pollution as Jesus saw it, and sperm from another place so far away as to be ever unknown.

Sperm that had drifted through eons so numerous that they had no more meaning. Perhaps Eternity was its name. As it ventured into the universe with seven planets, a sun and a moon, it was drawn by something it could not name, being not yet sentient; more like a waking dream. It had tasted mankind and found it appealing. It hungered for that thing called evil, much as a gourmand would hunger for spicy food . . . finding pleasure in the most potent of taste.
Why it chose to feast on evil was a matter of random circumstance that would dart like a rancid thread throughout its journey. It fed off the psyche, the essence of other life forms. It's origin, a place so far away that it might have been God's first breath.
Earth had devolved into a sewer, a hinterland of hatred, violence, and populated with beings without conscience or moral barriers. Of course it had felt the others, the weak and listless; wanted no part of white bread when it could close itself around jalapeno peppers and hot oil, onions rather than crackers. Evil, its concept and consequence unknown and unabsorbed by the sperm, was its craving. Evil energized and excited the palette, gave birth to energy that could be fertilized and grown into functioning organic matter in the Petri dish of the fermenting rotting refuge that collects beneath.



The top of this place called Earth was a sickly coating of grease beneath which raged the delicacies. Beneath, in those hidden places, drainage ditches, abandoned buildings, storm sewers and the labyrinth in which squirmed the sociopath, the insane, the walking wounded and those who slaughtered, raped and maimed. . . and killed just for fun. Oh, my they were tasty, and the Other fed voraciously.

The sperm had evolved enough after several centuries of feeding on the dregs of the inhabitants of this and other planets. Weak evil had been the best it could find, until it arose into 2012 on the planet called Earth. This era was fervid, rabid with delicious evil - so it fed and watched for a womb to impregnate. Jesus was the culmination of that dread, he became that womb.

Actual spermatozoa die quickly. This was a engineered sperm, meant to travel the icy reaches of whatever universes it had to in order to find its womb. Just like the sci-fi movies, this breed had created what might be called a procreation - an eternally viable machine made of nano-substance. These nano-thoughts held the sperm of that ancient species, protecting it like a nanny with a baby. Sperm may not have been the term for this life-creating matter, but what it was called made no difference.
Neither Jesus nor the other were able to think on a high enough plain for discussion. But in the span of time the Other would awaken to its "self", then it would feed on those necessary to provide it information. And Jesus, Jesus was merely an oven to bake the bread of that alien life.

No act of sex was involved in the Others impregnation of Jesus. One of its many ribbony arms reached out with a lancet, stuck a tiny particle of living cells into the cut on Jesus's arm. Since it did this while Jesus slept, the host was never aware of the intruder.

Whether the Other's concept of evil and the human concept were even vaguely similar was something debatable. Julia found evil in the most humble speck of dust, inserting Satan into the formula, while the Other may have considered evil a fuel necessary to it's existence. All things are only what we name them. The rest is woven with our separate ideas, ideals and idealism. Cloven-hoofed, horned, man-like creature? High octane fuel?

Awed by his captor or creator, Jesus had no inkling of the thing germinating inside him. Emily had no idea that what stung her thigh in that place behind the wall was more than a small stab, maybe on a nail or brad. No way to know that an ordinary wind had caught some of the nano-substance, whirling them into the detritus that found a resting place in the foul building. Fate works in chaos, the Other, a sponge soaking up the residue of each action.

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