Pantheon Chapter 1 ...FEEDBACK PLEASE! thanks

Pantheon
Chapter One: Gaia


Black and white alternately pounded and stabbed the skyline. Rainless, the tempest flickered in through the window above Richard's head and bounced off the marble floors, casting twisted split second shadows all across the room. In ignorant defiance to the commotion all around him he stared out the high windows. From behind his black cheek-length hair he looked past the prison-like bars into the vacant sky, waiting for the stranger, like he was gazing through time, looking forward to some other life he could almost remember living. His green eyes gazing ever outward he laughed at his joke of a life. Though he liked the desert he had never been outside of the American southwest.

Nine years ago someone had doorbell ditched a Las Vegas city fire depot and left a sleeping child behind. Adorned with four strange symbols, one in each corner there was a brown ratty note tied to his leg with frayed twine. Only one discernable message was hastily scrawled in blotchy ink.


In danjur
Importent- Keep live


It was determined that Richard must have been five or six years old at the time. All his life he wondered what kind of people would leave a note like that. 'Weird old idiots,' he had concluded. Despite his unknown parentage the city declared Richard to be Caucasian. He never understood what that meant. No one ever offered a straight answer when he asked where Caucasia was. Adults just chuckled and ruffled his pitch hair so he stopped asking questions, but there were always questions. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he just abandoned? What did they mean by danger, if that's even what they meant at all? Most importantly why couldn't he remember? At fourteen or fifteen he knew he should still have memories of the fire station and before. The answers, like his parents, simply escaped him.

There was only the constant herding between boys ranches and foster homes. Especially unhappy at his current middle-of-nowhere slave labor camp he considered running away. He hated the remoteness of the place. It was easier to be alone in a crowd than a sore thumb on guy with one hand. Thankful for the short field trip he was currently watching the windows of some smelly moth-ball museum in the heart of Las Vegas.

It was late and dark outside. The chaperones scurried about in a worried frenzy over a few missing delinquents and the impending storm. Richard couldn't help but laugh. He, the alleged "Ring Leader" of the nonconformists, had just been praised for his current presence. Black smirked. If it weren't for his compelling the other boys to try their luck on the Vegas strip he wouldn't have the brand new mp3 player in his pocket, and they were the ones to take the heat. What use were some vacationer's credit cards anyway? A few chips were nothing to him in the middle of a go-nowhere boys ranch compared to eighty gigabytes of free music, courtesy of some unattended backpack at the nearby college lab.

In defiance to the various exhibits of displays Black had made himself comfortable in a corner with a particularly nice stone wall on which to lean. Concealing perfectly, coupled with his new hooded sweatshirt, his tan face and the surprisingly snug headphones. He made sure his music was loud enough that he didn't have to hear the adults arguing.

"Have you questioned Rich-"

"A million and a half times. He said they mentioned the strip."

"There's no way we can make it back in this weather."

"Yes we can, it's not even raining and the news reports-"

"But if it starts, the road will be too muddy for this bus and since when has the news ever been right?"

"What are you saying, that we spend the night here?"

"If it comes to it, with the boys and all I'd rather spend the night here than stuck on some dirt road halfway to the ranch."

The adults' argument was masked by screeching guitars, drums, and the latest electronic bleeps.

Richard, that was what they named him. Sometimes, the more annoying tried their luck with Richie, but anyone who knew better called him Black. The children often used made up names. It was his favorite color, his dress code and coincidentally his hair was as dark as a moonless midnight. He liked it so much that he went so far as to dye his already black hair just to make it look deliberate.

Black was both Richard's title and surname as he saw it. He was the black sheep of the Lost Vegas boys. No foster family kept him. Valiant couples saw Black as a parenting challenge or as their divine project. Embracing rejection, he never let them tame him. Although he liked the foster homes best, he got sick of them quickly. Sooner or later he always bounced back to the state, and he preferred it that way, not that he liked the state itself, but Nevada nags a lot less than would-be-mothers on a mission. The better they got to know him the more they tried to "help" him. Above all he didn't like the feeling that he belonged anywhere. He needed to keep moving.

Standing in the corner ignoring the world around him he was simply indifferent like nothing affected him. He thought of himself as a shadow, only frightening if you fear it. Patient and tactful he was only cutthroat if provoked.

The other boys' return cued Black's volume finger, as he watched the silent scene, music now blasting louder than before. Black did regret that he had not seen their faces when they fruitlessly searched for him on the strip. The mental movie played out in his mind, the boys found the strip and no Black. They would look for hours before getting caught by angry social workers and dragged back to the museum. Their play time utterly wasted they were now being tried and sentenced. They would later tell Black, who had a superb alibi for not meeting them where he promised, that he was lucky he wasn't caught, and he'd just shrug. He kept the volume up, the mental movie was good enough, and providentially the mp3 player was absolutely loaded with everything he liked.

After the public reprimand the group was admonished to "go one last time." Black continued leaning like a lazy sentinel as the rest of the crew filtered in and out of the bathroom, legs crossed and arms folded. Some other boys approached him, curious to know of his exploits. Black was revered for his ability to attain certain forbidden articles. Negotiating his way out of the ranch as often as possible, every trip to the city was a chance to practice his art as the remote desert kept the children in the ranch.

Unfearing retaliation, he shooed them all away. Last field trip proved that none were willing to rat him out when staff caught a boy with a portable video game device. Now, with a trip to the city, Black's peer was anxious to have the confiscated device replaced with another newer gaming system.

"No deal," he announced to the expectant fellow rancher. "You got nothing I want anymore."

"But I-"

"You heard me, take a hike!"

With a particular waving motion of his hand Black ushered the other barterer away. In truth, for the first time, he wasn't able to obtain the requested goods. Distracted during his collection run, a skinny long haired and scruffy man at the university had caught him rummaging through backpacks. Instead of capture the man had approached Black and offered freedom, change which he readily accepted.

Black turned back towards the window. Tonight was the night he was leaving. He wondered why he hadn't done it sooner. Free food and scarcity of cash were just excuses. But now he had met someone, someone different from the regular runaway or criminal. This one was smarter. Richard felt somehow he wouldn't get killed or caught with him. He continued to watch the window.

Black stayed in that corner even after everyone was asleep. Outside, the flash and bangs worsening it was still dry in the city. The intensified lightning helped Black keep alert, now sitting against a wall in the designated corner of the museum's entrance hall.

The museum was quiet, closed under care of security guards. Richard didn't know how the stranger would come. With reservation, he envisioned the epic jailbreak it would require, but the man seemed to know exactly how he would do it. It was all the same to him, he wasn't going to challenge. Questions got people like him into trouble, not authority trouble but trouble with trouble itself.

Black waited for what only seemed like a few minutes, but could have been hours. He was too indifferent for time to get to him.

The moment finally came, quietly, unnoticed. The wall behind him began to grow warmer steadily under the cover of the storm's humidity. Black shot up to his feet, back sweating. Half expecting to see that he had been sitting against a broken radiator he stepped away annoyed. Looking back, unflinching and stifling disbelief as a section of wall appeared to melt before his eyes. No one seemed to notice as a stranger stood alone in the opening, hair blowing on the edges of a hood. A black coat ran to the strangers' knees.

"Black, we're going." The stranger beckoned with a follow-me motion and turned towards the night. The air was filled with a cool storm breeze. Though lightning flashed the sky, still no rain fell in the city, there was only wind and shadow. As they strolled away from the outer walls of the museum Black saw the wall close up as if nothing had happened. To that world, that was the night Black disappeared.

Richard left all of his things in his backpack, even a few things he had stolen that looked valuable, he wanted to leave the impression that he simply vanished. He wanted them to wonder why he didn't take anything with him. He thought about a suicide note but it seemed to him a mystery, the unknown, was more fitting. He just showed up one day and now he was simply gone.

Before returning to that museum that evening, just in case he was searched, he had stashed some of his other newly acquired goods in a hollow tree close by. Wanting to get them he asked the Stranger.

"Shut your mouth you. You can't take it where we're going anyway and as much as I like practicing my English I'd rather you just shut up." That seemed to be the end of the conversation.

The hooded man led him to a ditch by a freeway underpass. Stepping down into the ditch they came to a metal grating over a drainage hole. The stranger touched it and it too melted. Black's arm was grabbed and he was pulled to the hole.

"Get in!"

"You're full of-"

"Get in yourself or it will hurt more when I stuff you down."

Black nearly pulled out his knife but his better judgment took over and he cautiously climbed in. He was no match for a wall melter or whatever else the stranger was. Nor did Black think it wise to find out presently. His feet hit a splashy ground that he didn't know was coming so soon and he fell to one knee.

"Not bad kid. A natural faller. You might add up to something."

"Where are we going, and what's your name anyway?"

"I'll tell you my name, you're going to hear it sooner or later but you won't believe anything else, so don't ask. Name's Yuki, that's it, just Yuki. No it's not Japanese or anything like that and you won't believe me if I tell you where, but you'll see."

After a little walk in pure darkness being pushed from behind by Yuki, Black saw a bright flash and instantly felt a sharp pain in his head. When he came to he was laying in some rancid water next to a set of short wide steps. It took no time at all for his eyes to adjust to the dim light emanating from something he did not recognize. He started to look around trying not to seem awake.

As his eyes attuned themselves to the lack of light, the darkness past the steps became an archway and there appeared a light. As the light drew nearer it grew a pair of arms and then a body, someone was holding the light, 'Yuki that backstabber!'

"Sorry kid, it was necessary, would have been mounds of trouble. We're there now so get up."

As Black got to his feet he opened his mouth but was cut off.

"Just shut up and listen. I need to know everything you have on you, down to every little hairpin and piece of string. Put it on the table or it'll be your head that lies there instead. Now!"

"What the-"

"Do it and don't make me ask again."

Black started emptying his pockets and Yuki shouted "Everything." He didn't have much, a small stiletto and a big hunting knife. There was a little utility piece that consisted of a miniature compass and a lock pick and a few other little pocket knife type tools. There was a little cash and a lighter. Black wasn't about to hand over the new mp3 player he had just recently adopted.

"If that's not everything you'll be dead or in prison in less than an hour, and believe me you won't like this sort of prison."

Black subdued a few nerves that started to perk up, having kept his mp3 player from Yuki's grasp. A few seconds pause, but minutes calmer, he pulled off his left shoe. He took out the insole and then withdrew a thin piece of metal with a nasty spike on the end. There were a few holes in the piece, a skinny pair of steel knuckles. A butterfly knife came from the hollow sole his right shoe.

"Do you have any necklaces or jewelry?"

"No."

"Really? No piercings?"

A ring and a bar went from his lip and tongue to the table.

"Happy?"

"Don't get smart, ant." Yuki smirked as he pulled something out of a coat pocket. It was a small black and brown box with a square hole in one end. He held it so that the hole faced outwards and took few steps over to the table. Light in one hand, box in the other, he lowered them both to the table. Yuki touched the hole-side of the box to the first knife, the stiletto. It melted and disappeared, then the butterfly. Everything black had melted and disappeared until the large hunting knife was the only thing on the table. "This is ugly, besides it won't be much good to you anymore."

Black stood there with a protest deep in his throat. Not knowing what to say as Yuki seemed to materialize a white chalky disc from nowhere. Yuki picked up the knife and tapped it to the disc. The blade turned to dust and was sucked into the disc. Black stood in awe, that disk was solid no mistake, yet it sucked the dust into it.

"No more questions squirt?"

Black dared, opening his mouth-

"Good, stay shut up, you'll live longer."

"No," Black complained, "I need some information. You choose what you're going to tell me, it won't matter what I ask, but you tell me something before you or I make another move."

With a wide still hooded grin, Yuki retorted almost sinisterly, "Ok kid, you've earned it, but keep your shorts on. I work in a little different line of smuggling than you think. This is a border unlike any you've ever seen, and I always have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. This box is a smugglers hole. It can store huge amounts of just about anything, even someone unconscious. How's your head by the way?"

"You put me…that's-"

"That's what, impossible? Or magic? Ha, kid, keep your eyes open." With that Yuki touched the side of the box, stroked the corner, closed his eyes, and pulled a three foot long sword out of the box. "This, my friend, once belonged to a man named Gilgamesh," his proud announcement was met with a blank stare. "Don't know your history eh?" He traced the box, and closing his eyes Yuki then pulled out "something you might have heard of, the staff of Merlin. And this," he boasted as he pulled a third time, "is the helm of Hades, worn and lost by Perseus."

Something about the last item rang a bell but the name to which the staff belonged he knew. "So what?"

"So what?" Yuki repeated in disbelief. "These artifacts are hundreds of years old and worth a fortune, but the point is this box can hold just about anything you want. I put you in there. On our way down here in the tunnels I heard voices. There's never any way to know who a voice in the dark belongs to so I stuffed you in here. It's easier to defend myself alone, and smuggling extremely rare and expensive artifacts requires serious skill, especially where we're going, so I don't need you screwing it up!"

"So where are we going?"

"Nowhere that you would believe. Now, it's easy to hide anything in the box. The box itself takes some effort in hiding. There's a few ways to do it, you can make it appear to be something it's not." He illustrated by somehow turning the box into a scarf. "It doesn't always last long and there are rarely any options since you can't take anything with you to this place." The scarf turned back to a box. "Clothing is a number one suspect for hiding things by the way, so it won't work here. Or you can try to dilute it into the air," he did not demonstrate, "an easy thing to do but very unreliable. The chances of finding it are slim, the chances of being able to get it back are slim, and the chances of it being detected are not so slim, but the feat is the easiest to perform. A third option, my personal preference; reversing the magic of the box on itself, much the same as melting it into air but a little more specific. With a little magical skill and tolerance for pain you can melt it into yourself." He stared at the box for a minute or two then jammed two of his fingers in the hole. While saying something under his breath the box began to melt. Yuki pulled his fingers apart and turned the box inside out. Then he clapped his hands together around the box. There was an absorbing silence that followed and he opened his hands to show nothing but air like a magic card trick when the card ended up in your sleeve.

"It's painful, but they'll never find it." That moment Black saw a deep red smear on the palm of Yuki's hand. Curious, he looked at the other and saw blood seeping out of a cut so deep he expected to see through to the back of the hand. Yuki dressed the wound like it was an involuntary response. Jaw gaping, Black agreed with Yuki's previous assumption about his disbelief. 'Ok this guy gets some credit. That was way cool,' he applauded mentally, which only made him more curious about his destination.

"Great marring," Yuki continued, "will stand out under the Aegis Oculi. And just so you know kid very few people know this method even exists and fewer can achieve it," he paused, "we've wasted enough time already, we need to move. I'll even tell you why. We are in one of many antechambers. This room is where you may purchase a locker," he directed, pointing at some heavy metal doors on the sides of the walls. Black had not noticed those before. "Almost anything of this sphere cannot be taken to the other, vice versa. I take what I want where I want. With that Yuki went over to a chest next to some lockers opened it and started rummaging.

"You didn't tell me why."

"Eh, so I didn't. Here put these on." In Yuki's arms was a bundle of interesting looking cloth.

"No way!"

"You're going to wish you did."

"Yeah I'm sure I will big guy."

"Alright kid," Yuki chuckled. "You know best. Come on, time to go."

The Thirteen Houses

---little intro to this clip: in Gaia they use a sidereal astrology with 13 signs of the zodiac. the Great library of alexandria, like a campus, has thirteen seperate buildings each based on a sign of the zodiac. they are inter-connected with portal-like doorways one to several others at a time. According to legend travelling through them in the proper order will transport someone to Toth's room of omniscience, where one may achieve secret knowledge. The believed path of the houses, or the library ecliptic, has become a major tourist attraction. Black and Evo are getting nowhere with their research in the library and Black suggests taking a break....

     Awkward silence, like a bubble around them, seemed to ward off the ambience of whispers and soft flops of books closing and being replaced to their shelves.

     “Let’s walk the path to wisdom,” Black offered, having his fill of sentimentality. “Where do we start?”

     “Your pamphlet should tell you.”

     There were a few stanzas of cleverly put poetry describing the exact process by which one should supposedly come to the fabled room of omniscience. It of course didn’t work. The path took them through each room in the correct zodiacal succession. Black knew too little of astrology to try and discern under which constellation each room was dedicated. Each room was exclusive in architecture and design tailored to their accompanying sign, built by various cultures. The different styles on display, more prominent within than viewed from the central garden, all seemed to compete for his affection.

     Each seemed to be bigger on the inside as they were all much larger than what little space was afforded them by the library’s garden. Black commented on this.

     “Contrarily,” Evo explained, “the modest structures at the library are just trans-spatial enablers. Each building exists physically in an entirely separate location from the garden room. Each time we cross a new threshold we are in effect warped to the various corresponding points on campus.”

     “I think you’ve outdone yourself this time,” unimpressed Black chided. “Could have just said the doors are all just teleports to different buildings around town.”

     Either way it was an impressive feat of magical alteration. Black couldn’t decide whether he thought the idea of buildings being bigger on the inside or doorways that transported you to a different structure altogether were more or less high tech than the other.

     “You got the point didn’t you?”

Black didn’t have a rebuttal. The pair kept mostly silent as they gawked over the thirteen unique and separately stunning rooms.

     Ares, The first house, built of majestic stone and marble it was vast and open. Like a throne room every sound carried a heavy echo. Sterile and strong massive bookshelves stood between thick windows too high to show what lay beyond them. It felt like a trek getting from one end to the other.

     The next room was separated from the myriad of entry ways by an unassuming cloister. Simplistic and open, Black saw a very plain courtyard walled in by similar vestibules. A Sparsely watered lawn was dotted by a few dull wildflowers and several boulders were indented slightly from years of somber mediation. The special fold out illustration provided the sign and story behind Taurus, the bull. They only took three steps in that homely foyer, in, around and out.

     Dark, cave-like Gemini was adorned with dazzling lights, twinkling and moving across the walls and ceiling. The outer walls bore texture but the slow pulsars were too dim for examination. Coffers and busts and other effigies were tucked into multiple alcoves and corners. Black couldn’t help but feel like he was being watched as arches picked at the roofs and the pillars between held their ground like stalagmatic columns. Braziers lit the way to the bright exits, everything in pairs. One in particular held an emanating green glow that reminded Black of modern commercial exit signs. It was uncertain how many patrons of this grand bibliotheca were perusing the shelves of tomes in this unenduring light.

     Cancer the fourth house of the zodiac, tended by the Gothic race was musty and dark. Rectangular and small several staircases gave it an illusionary feel. Sharp contrasts in stone and angles almost felt semi-modern in design. They climbed several flights of stairs passing deep colored wood paneled rooms. Fireplaces tapestries and gunmetal gray suits of armor decorated the different sections all stacked one on another. The top level came to sharp point at the top. Black could see, through the small-paned skinny windows, flying buttresses stabbing into the ground far below. One of the recessed doors in the back of the cathedral like suite was adorned with carvings and runes. It ushered them into the room of Leo. 

     Overly bright, the house of the lion appeared as though the earth spun between a handful of suns as a distant dusk blazed though every window around the room. It made for faint but confusingly complicated shadows and vivid highlights. Everything seemed to glow.

     A crimson aura bled from a knife-edge marble aperture as they shuttled into to the next room. A story was certainly behind why Evo uncomfortably led them quickly through the satin and velvet of Virgo. Black got nothing out of him and by the time they passed from the red candlelight and web of silk veils into an apparent inferno beyond, Black had totally forgotten.

     Crossing the threshold of Libra, the whole chamber was laid out n front of them. The only doorways were all on the same end, all looking to the far side of the hall of judgment. A great length of stone led the way to a flat polished island in the middle of the chamber. Kingly red carpet complimented the churning lava that surrounded the massive platform. Black couldn’t fathom how this was possible but they didn’t stop to decipher the magic behind it. They turned around and headed through a doorway right beside the one that connected them to the staircase of Scorpio.

     Designed, decorated and maintained by the Persian consulate it was adorned with vibrant blue mosaics and lush contrasts of stone and greenery. A miniature version of the hanging gardens, it blended the feel of Alexandria well with the Mesopotamian pantheon. Neat and tidy everywhere, except on one of the numerous terraces, the flora that marked the next doorway was wild and unkempt.

     Among the thick, fern caked forest of Sagittarius the feeling of being followed grew. Black felt that mentioning this here would be the worst possible time, as Evo was a centaur himself and coincidentally born late in the year. He kept looking around the trees and tried to peer through the undergrowth but never discovered anything. High above them in the trees balconied reading areas were warmly decorated with hammocks and tall tables. The room was filled with a natural orchestra as the creaking sound of wood in the wind played against the sound of trickling water and tiny animals rustling the ferns. The various points of egress were hard-to-spot openings in the trunks of seemingly random trees.

     Through an oddly out of place and tiny doorway they ducked into the unusual looking stump that gave passage to the thirteenth house, Ophiuchus.

From there the handheld guide directed them through a familiar looking Capricorn, to a noisy Aquarius, laden with simple gears, cogs and waterworks. Black wondered just how fine a line between what technology the gods allowed and what was considered occult, taboo and forbidden.  

     Built on a sandy island somewhere off the Aquarian pier the room of the fish was built of golden columns and colored by Egyptian hieroglyphs. Boardwalks terraced over the sand and waves that crashed through the stilted glass walls. Pools, dotted between the walkways, displayed an array of multicolored fish. An impossible sandstone staircase led under the sea in the direction of the glass pyramid.

     As they waited to be whisked off to a fourteenth room, legendary and dreamlike the moment passed. Nothing changed. Disappointment was not experienced however. Feelings of awe and completeness attached to their very bones. ‘No wonder this is all so readily dismissed as metaphor,’ Black mused. It was just so strange for him to think of something, in a world of so much fantasy and myth, that actually was just a story and nothing more.

     “I can’t believe this is all a library, all one library.” Black’s words fumbled from his mouth.

     “Now you can see how it made for such a good hideout during the old wars between the worlds.”

     They continued their short journey ending once again in the courtyard, the seemingly simple garden in the heart of the library. Not, to Thoth’s room of omniscience.

     “Do you see that guy over there? I think he’s been watching us.”

     Evo beckoned toward a small reliquary nearby.

     Speedily he led Black across the courtyard to a smallish building with stained glass windows. Evo pushed him forward between a large stone table and the wall.

     “Go!” he issued with a harsh whisper.

     “Wha-“

     “Just move, we’re being followed.”

     “Lead the way, I’ll tail ya.”

     Black stepped aside as Evo squeezed past him. “By the way, that doesn’t mean what you think it means, especially when you say it to someone who actually has a tail.”

     “Um, sorry.” Black was not as interested, as he normally would have been, in finding out what it meant while trying to shake off another assassin or mobster.

     Evo briskly trotted to the end of the small chamber before it occurred to Black that not too long ago he would have thought it insane to try and escape into a building with one apparent door and only about the size of a typical living room.

     “Are we hiding or fighting?” he asked following the train of thought that assumed there wasn’t anywhere to go.

     “Running, come on.”

     Black had forgotten where he was for a moment and was confused. As they climbed up the gothic stairs of Cancer he grieved over his temporary idiocy, this wasn’t the time to be slowing them down with questions. He gave Evo space and time to think undisturbed by dumb questions, like ‘how are we going to avoid being trapped in this small tomb?’

     “Sometimes I really hate being a centaur.” Evo ducked and squirmed his way up the dark spiral staircase.

Black had neither empathy nor wisdom on the subject, he remained silent. He stepped quietly higher as the shadow of a man below them slithered through filtered daylight that jousted through the stained glass kaleidoscope windows. Even without the clumsiness of a centaur on spiral stairs their stalker had the advantage. It was upstairs in a musty gothic undercroft, standing before three stone archways, that Evo issued his next direction.

     The arrival of a cloaked figure cut Evo short.

     “Go!”

a conversation for a future book

for some unknown protagonist in book 2 maybe…or possibly a character with commitment issues named tyro in a parallel novel.

“I feel like I want to quit.”

“Of course you do. You should.”

“What? I thought-“

“You should want to quit. You should consider it, mull it over, list the pros and cons. When you’re done either you will see why you must never give in to that desire or you will see why you won’t allow yourself to be great.”

“Well,” started ????, trying to force back the flood of emotion long enough to conquer the concept.

“Well, without the desire to throw everything away holding on means nothing.”

“Hmmm.” Humming like mental drilling, giving shape to the new thoughts, he began to solidify his resolve.

“They key to perseverance is not in a tolerance to suffering, but in feeling the joy of the reward before it is earned. If you are determined to reach your desires, every bit of pain experienced on the journey becomes bliss.”

Like springtime to a frigid season of doubt, reason bloomed. Empowerment clothed his naked feelings and without shame, standing, a solid frame, he affirmed his understanding of the sage advice with a nod. 

rebirth

Overwhelmed, exaggerated and taxed by depravity, eyes with staring intentions broke their spiteful glance.  Looking up, forward, jostling the minds perception of near proportions, sinews tore attention from what lay eager and willing below. Keys lay in wait, languish in longing, and groaning under the pressure of not being touched. Finally the tap-dance tiptoe of ill timed triggers fired off at close range after a long silent drought. Unlearned and shaken, slithering digits dialed deliberate delusions. Cynical and sorry, new blanketing emerged, whipped and frothy the sound of it bellowed. Dulling the senses, the eyes, the cloud-in-head laughs joyous like ignorant i-told-you-so innocence. Something was. Some weak dully conceived thing, like an oil-doily, gross and gorgeous, was. It came, flourished like flowers of gothic fancy spinning out of control within the smallest sphere, nigh nakedly detectable. But it was, is and diminishes, a thought, a simple spark of a wh- sounding notion. Period. Created.

Finally, holes' 'been sittin' for too long!

the barrel's been turning, the mixture poised, resolute. the lever has been stuck, perched on the cusp of the chute. not grease nor tork could force the flow, but unplanned like a quake the levy will break and into the holes the concrete will go!

villain re-vamped (not a vampire reference)

     “Wake up kid.”

     “Huh? Oh my head,” murmured Black as he tried to adjust to the dark. “I’m really getting sick of waking up somewhere new every ten seconds!”

     “I’m sure the pirates will welcome your appreciation for being rescued.”

     “Pirates?” Black questioned, interrupting the unfamiliar voice.

     “Who else would be out sailing in a storm like that?”

     As Black looked around he saw everything he’d expect from a pirate ship, cannons, cannon balls, empty liquor bottles strewn about. He saw the person, or thing now addressing him, leaning against a row of tall bars. Secured with the largest padlock he had ever seen, its smallish head was tilted to the side and its slender limbs wavered with fatigue.  Despite all weariness or perhaps resultant the acute ferocity with which it spoke was like being held at knifepoint.

     Skin dark and metallic like tungsten stretched itself around crooked joints. Pitch scraps of leather and shadow shielded most of the demon leaving only few visible traces of his putrid flesh most of which were pocked with faintly glowing tattoos and scars and unspeakable blemishes. Over its shoulder something broken looking protruded from the beings back.

     Black saw silvery needles lined up behind the creature’s lips, a mouth full of the coldest looking, elongated, evil tainted canines, one of which would make any vampire jealous. Black imagined Gaiean dentistry being among the world’s most dangerous professions. The mere thought seemed to mock the fel creature near him.

     “I am Erra Yaga, the Corrupt. I eat children.”

     “Oh,” was all Black could muster from his tired lungs.

     “Now that we’ve been properly introduced why don’t you let me outta here and I’ll show how to properly use that map.”

     “We haven’t been-“

     “Think boy! Once the pirates figure out what that map is there’s no way you’ll ever see it again. There’s no time to lose let’s go!”

     Black puzzled over the prisoner that stood in his room. Admiring, as another deviant, his walking-battle-scar of an image h still found only disgust and disdain for the withering form. He seemed to know who he was, like he could see into his mind and soul. How did he know about the map? Cold comprehension flooded over him in an instant as he realized he was no longer holding the map. He had not been able to put it back into his box.

     “Where is it?” he demanded.

lemonaid

life and lemons, forget what they say
brace your buds, eat them anyway
dont dement masochism, know its time and place
be there, lip schism. pucker up and suck face
a rind is just abc citrus
autopsy is dead without morticians
potential carries no closure to open wounds
idling, fruit forsaking, fly feeding, fends no feud
vesicles vindicate vibrantly
freely bequeathed acrid victory
and you're still looking for juice