tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18860218693476065732024-03-13T22:00:58.365-07:00Neurological ExcretionsE. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1886021869347606573.post-15940340129954171652013-11-03T20:33:00.003-08:002013-12-30T03:44:32.552-08:00The CurseI remember the night of the big game. It was the hottest summer in years. Over forty degrees outside that night, Celsius. We didn't care. Plenty of beer and soda at the concession stand to keep us cool.<br />
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It was a tense game. Every time one side managed to take the lead the other would score another run to tie it up, then go on to score again, on and on like that, back and forth for nine innings.<br />
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It was the bottom of the ninth and the bases were loaded (and it just wouldn't be a baseball story without that phrase, would it?). We'd fallen behind badly in the eighth, but we'd managed to close the gap somewhat in the subsequent inning. There'd been a rather nasty bean ball on our second-to-last batter up. Caught him square in the face. I was sitting in the third row and I managed to catch a glimpse of blood. He hit the dirt with a sickening thud. He hadn't swung the bat and the umpire ruled there hadn't been a chance to evade, so it was a Hit by Pitch. The man on third base took home and the other two advanced. We thought for sure a substitution would be called for first, but the batter picked himself up off the plate after about five seconds of lying there in pain, spat out a crimson loogie that may or may not have also contained one of his teeth and strolled into first as if nothing had happened.<br />
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I was amazed. What a trooper!<br />
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So, our last man at bat and we were still behind by two. Our hearts sank. The last batter they had left had been in a huge slump all season. An older fellow, in the twilight of his career. Had one bad knee that had undergone multiple surgeries over the past year and just when it seemed he was getting better, he'd made a bad slide in the first game of the series, severely spraining his other leg. Considering the bases were already loaded, he didn't necessarily need his legs for this, but he still didn't inspire confidence.<br />
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Next season his contract was up. Probably wouldn't be renewed. Be a hell of a way to go if he screwed this up. On the other hand, what a triumphant finale were he to succeed.<br />
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The first pitch was a ball, the second a strike. The next two pitches were the same, a back and forth that gave that final turn at the plate the feeling of the night's entire game itself in microcosm.<br />
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The pitcher threw another dud. Ball three.<br />
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There were boos from fans of the opposing team, criticizing the pitcher for his error. He stepped off the mound for a moment for a drink of water. When he returned the noise died down and the tension became almost palpable. It all came down to this.<br />
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The pitcher let fly with the ball.<br />
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The batter swung the lumber with all his might.<br />
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Crack!<br />
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A moment of panic. Where was the ball? I couldn't see it anywhere.<br />
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Then, elation. He'd knocked it out of the park. A stand-up triple.<br />
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We won!<br />
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The crowd went wild.<br />
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What followed was a night of drunken revelry. I was too young to drink legally at the time, but I had friends who were of age, so obtaining liquor was not a problem. And so, rendered virtually insensible by a heady mixture of vicarious triumph and concession stand booze, we exited the stadium, piling into the streets, cheering and screaming, a heard of raucous wild beasts, migrating towards the river.<br />
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You see, we have a rather odd tradition in my town. Whenever a local sports team wins a major game, the fans will head over to a small bridge which overlooks the river at a low enough height that it's possible for one to jump in from off the bridge without injury. Then, the crowd would yell out the names, one by one of the players on the team and with each name called, the fan who most resembled that player would take the plunge into the river. Pity the poor fellows who look like the members of our hockey team.<br />
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One after another they jumped in, laughing all the while, but eventually we realized there was a problem. The player who had scored the winning home run was a redhead but none of the fans who had come out to the river that night were. This wouldn't do.<br />
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Just up the street from the bridge there was a fast-food restaurant. Just outside the door was a life-sized statue of the chain's mascot, a cheap ceramic representation of a vapidly grinning clown with its hair painted a gaudy, fire engine red. I half-jokingly pointed it out to the others and before I knew it, a group of burly men were wrenching the thing off its pedestal. I was even helping, drunk as I was.<br />
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The manager of the place came rushing out, screaming obscenities, of course, but it did no good. We had already tossed the ceramic harlequin into the river, laughing and cheering in a bacchanalian frenzy. Our debauchery was soon interrupted, however by a police siren that scattered us like cockroaches before the kitchen light. My friends and I ran a few blocks, ducked into the nearest subway tunnel, tossed whatever loose change we had in the fare box, with little regard to whether it was the proper amount and hopped on the first train out. We were panting, dizzy and feeling so alive.<br />
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I came out of the whole thing quite well, I thought. I was horribly hung over the next day, but I managed to convince my parents I was merely ill. There was a brief mention of the incident with the statue on the local news and for a while I was afraid I would be caught, but neither the police, nor anybody else ever came for me.<br />
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That's not quite the end of it, though.<br />
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The next few years weren't so good for the baseball team. Most of their best players retired or were traded out or quit. The management was incompetent, or so people would say. They just couldn't play like they used to. It was one losing season after another.<br />
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The human mind is a funny thing. When things don't go our way we look for explanations anywhere we can. Try to find some easy answer. Sometimes we see connections between things that aren't really there. Apophenia is what the experts call it.<br />
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The story of the statue being stolen and thrown in the river got around. Somehow, people began to think it was behind the team's slump. That the vengeful spirit of the restaurant chain's founder had cursed the team and would not allow them to win until the statue was recovered.<br />
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I never believed a word of it, of course. It's patently absurd to believe that a dead fast-food entrepreneur has any effect on the performance of a baseball team. Winning a major national championship is simply a difficult feat and it may be some time before they can replicate their previous success.<br />
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Still...<br />
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Still, every time I attended one of their games, or saw them on TV, saw them strike out, throw bad pitches and make truly cringe-worthy playing errors, I couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt. Had I done this to them? Had my youthful impulsiveness caused this?<br />
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Ridiculous. Of course not. I always pushed such thoughts out of my head quickly, but they always returned eventually.<br />
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Maybe I just felt guilty about wrecking that poor man's store. I would have apologized, but I was afraid of the possibility of jail time. Besides, it was a big company, they could afford the loss.<br />
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I never did tell anyone. I never even discussed it with the people who already knew. The closest I ever came was one night when I attended a game with one of my friends who had been with me on the big night. As we were coming out of the stadium after yet another disappointing performance, we overheard another fan say something along the lines of "If I ever find the guy who threw that statue in the river, I'll kill him!" The two of us exchanged a knowing glance before moving on.<br />
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Twenty years went by. With school and work taking up most of my life I had little time for watching baseball, so I was surprised one day to hear that the team had finally managed to get to the series once more after all these years. I joined some friends at the sports bar to watch the first game of the post-season on the bar's gargantuan TV that took up most of the eastern wall.<br />
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It was incredible. Our team took an early lead in the bottom of the third & from there they utterly crushed their opponents. After seeing them lose again and again for two straight decades this was something to behold. A friend commented that the season's Rookie of the Year bore a striking resemblance to me.<br />
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"If we win," he said, "you're going in the river."<br />
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And win we did. It was no contest. And even though it was only the start of the series, we were so exited we just had to take to the river. Everyone was so happy. Everywhere the fans were cheering that the curse had been broken. It was like a great yoke had been lifted.<br />
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And so we came to the bridge. One by one the names were called and one by one they jumped. I was the last one in. I was nervous at first. The bridge looked so tiny from a distance, barely a few feet over the water, but looking down off it was a different story. But I looked at the others who had made the jump before me, splashing around, perfectly healthy, I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath and I jumped.<br />
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I hit the water feet-first with a splash and fell right to the bottom of the shallow river, completely submerged. I tried to swim up, but realized with horror that I couldn't. My left leg was caught on something. Panic washed over me, but I resisted the urge to scream and let the brackish water into my lungs. I bent down to see what I was caught on, to try to free myself. The water was murky and it took me a second to make it out.<br />
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A hand.<br />
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And I screamed. The taste of the water was awful. Oil and shit and garbage. All the grotesque refuse of humanity that had been allowed to seep in. Even if I didn't drown, I'd probably be poisoned to death anyway. I could feel the filthy water seeping its way through my mouth and nasal passages into my lungs. That awful wet, burning sensation.<br />
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And as it all started to fade away, I got a glimpse of what the hand was attached to.<br />
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Yes, that's right. That clown. Half submerged in the mud at the river bottom, waiting for me after all these years. How could it be anything else?<br />
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Maybe I was the one who was cursed all along.E. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1886021869347606573.post-85985221020047756862013-10-29T17:04:00.003-07:002013-10-29T17:04:44.756-07:00Last of the DragonridersThere was no better feeling in the world than soaring through the open sky on dragonback, Caeryd thought.<br />
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The fresh wind in your face, the flurry of the great beast's wings churning the air to gain altitude when you pulled on the reins. There was a feeling of so much raw, living, barely controlled power right underneath you, seeing the desperate, ragged men in the trenches below looking like ants and feeling above it all, literally and figuratively.<br /><br />Caeryd had been terrified of dragons as a child. When he'd been started on riding lessons at the tender age of seven, he took one look at the beast he was to ride, its dagger-like teeth, hooked claws, growling loudly and belching acrid black smoke, Caeryd ran out of the stable screaming and crying. His father was not stingy with his belt the following evening, feeling the child's display had shamed their proud bloodline.<br /><br />"Our family have served the king as air-cavalrymen for more than a dozen generations!" Caeryd's father bellowed as he disciplined the boy. "No son of mine is afraid of dragons! You're that beast's master, now act like it!"<br /><br />At first Caeryd resented his father for forcing him onto those awful creatures. He would have preferred to ride horses, he thought. He always loved seeing the show-horses when the family attended a festival. Their soft hair and flowing manes seemed so much more pleasant than the dragons' rough scales. Nevertheless, day after day he would be pushed into the saddle on the back of one of those noisy, smoky monsters. Getting bucked off into the mud, slapped with its tail... it probably would have eaten him if it wasn't for the muzzle.<br /><br />Still, as time went on, he learned to feel at ease around the creatures. He learned how to bond with them by grooming, picking off leftover skin as they shed; cleaning their teeth. He learned that dragons were closely related to crocodiles, and as crocodiles become friendly with the birds that groom them, humans could exploit this instinct to gain their trust. Eventually he was able to stay on his mount's back for more than a minute at a time.<br /><br />It really came together for Caeryd when he finally got airborne. It was preceded by months of lessons regarding the proper commands, altitude, winds, making sure the mount had enough gas in its flight bladders, etcetera. He found it incredibly boring, but when they took to the skies it was worth every minute of it.<br /><br />Caeryd felt all his anxieties melt away. It was as if he was finally where he truly belonged. He didn't even have to think about the right way to pull the reins to make his mount do what he wanted, it was all so perfectly natural to him. The dragonrider's blood flowing through his veins had finally taken effect. He felt embarrassed with himself for having ever wanted to ride such a tedious creature as a horse.<br /><br />He'd been so eager to finally get the chance to put his skills to work when the duchy of Fenne had invoked the old treaties and called upon the kingdom of Arveon for aid in its struggle against the encroaching Krausian Empire. He was invincible, swooping down over the Krausian trenches, raining fiery death upon the men within. The bullets whizzing past his head gave him such a rush. Those fools could never hope to hit a flying target with their crude rifles. He had to be careful around the machinegun positions, but there was a trick to it. Keep your distance, keep moving and when they stopped to reload, dive in at top speed and hit them with a fireball. The popping sound of the ammunition cooking off was eminently satisfying.<br /><br />But as much fun as the hit and run attacks were, he also loved the cavalry charges - he and his wingmen diving into the thick of it, roasting the enemy alive, tearing them limb from limb with teeth, claws and sabre. He couldn't help but laugh out loud everytime the dragons tossed a soldier like a ragdoll.<br /><br />This was the life.<br /><br />The enemy had dragonriders, too, of course, but they were a joke. Neither the beasts nor the riders had the training, the skills nor the pedigree of Arveon's. In the two months since Arveon had entered the war, only five of the hundred dragonriders the king had pledged to the defence of Fenne had been brought down, all by machinegun fire. Careless fools, Caeryd thought. Much had been made of the contraptions when they'd first been used, to devastating effect, in the Kwaku Rebellion twenty years before. But the Kwaku tribesmen had no dragonriders and machineguns still lacked the power and the accuracy at range to take out a rider who knew what he was doing.<br /><br />Caeryd's mount, Sunfang, had taken a few shots to the left hind leg from one at the limits of its range during an early sortie, but his armoured scales ensured it was only a minor irritant. The shooter nonetheless paid with his life soon enough.<br /><br />Today, Caeryd was on a mission to support the Fennish 2nd Army as they attempted an assault on a major artillery position as part of Operation Halberd, the effort to push back the Krausian advance on the western front. The air cavalry wing was lead by the illustrious Sir Georn Callain, the hero of The Second Alhazred War. A living legend, the man had, among his many incredible feats, singlehandedly defeated one hundred of the Sultan's finest Roc air-cavalrymen during the siege of Kayyam and rescued the hundreds of Arveonite pilgrims and merchants being held hostage within the city walls. Caeryd had been so awed by the man when he first met him he could barely speak. Callain must have been nearly seven reeds tall, with a mighty barrel chest as wide as his dragon's head was long. His red, fur-trimmed air-cavalry jacket was covered in medals from shoulder to beltline. He looked so stern inspecting the troops, but as soon as he heard Caeryd's name, something shifted. His severe face, with its granite jaw and wild, colossal red moustache cracked into a huge, manic grin and he slapped the younger man on the back with a gloved hand as big as a toddler.<br /><br />"So you're Tannean's son!" He exclaimed in his characteristic booming voice. Caeryd nodded nervously in agreement.<br /><br />"I thought it was you! You look just like him when he was your age. I flew with your father in Dhamibia. I say, we really gave those puff-heads what for! How is the old man, lately, anyway? How's his leg?"<br />Caeryd was so taken aback by his superior's jovial display he didn't quite know how to respond. He managed to get out "Uh... he's fine, just fine..." after an awkward pause.<br /><br />"Glad to hear it! I really need to come visit him when this awful business is over with, I haven't seen him in a Griffin's age. I'd planned on coming up to your family estate when I heard you were born, but then those bloody rug merchants started making noise again and I had a rather busy time of it, don't you know? Sorry about that, lad."<br /><br />Captain Callain was always the life of the party. His men would celebrate every successful mission with as much meat and ale as wartime conditions would permit as Callain regaled the greenhorns with tales of his past adventures. Though he was justly proud of his accomplishments, Callain never let them go to his head. Even the stableboys got seats at his table. A true man's man.<br /><br />Perhaps, Caeryd reflected, it was precisely because of his heroic reputation that Callain could afford to be so convivial with the men. He didn't need to intimidate them to earn their respect and loyalty.<br /><br />As he soared through the air, directly to the right of his illustrious leader's right flank, Caeryd thought he heard something over the rushing wind and his mount's wingbeats, some kind of buzzing, like a swarm of mosquitoes, or gods forbid, fairies... but louder, deeper, as if some giant insects had taken to the air in defiance of all laws of nature and physics.<br /><br />Off in the distance, coming up from behind the Krausian lines at one o'clock low and climbing fast, were a squadron of aeroplanes, six in all. Their bodies were painted dark blue and the topmost of their three wings proudly displayed the white sword insignia of the Krausian military.<br /><br />Caeryd had never seen one of the machines before the war. The air company kept a few for reconnaisance purposes. They could fly faster and higher than most dragons, but otherwise they weren't very impressive. Caeryd, and most of the riders, for that matter, thought they were ridiculous. They ran on petrol, so their engines gave off rather unpleasant fumes. Early attempts had been made to fuel them with hydrogen gas refined with cultured bacteria harvested from dragon bladders, but it was found to be simply too volatile to be used in something made from wood and canvas. The propellors had to be hand-started and there'd already been a few incidents of ground crew not getting out of the way in time. Much more trouble than they were worth, really.<br /><br />Caeryd reflected that it seemed a bit odd for so many of them to be together at once. Six aircraft were far too many for a simple recon mission. What were they playing at?<br /><br />The dragons were getting antsy. Snorting and swivelling their heads around. The men were uncomfortable, too. Callain signalled to them to keep formation. They already had a mission. Let the gunners back at the rear lines handle the planes.<br /><br />This would prove to be a costly mistake. The planes drew closer and closer. Sunfang looked like he would bolt at any minute and it was all Caeryd could do to rein him in. Must be that awful droning noise that's got him spooked, he thought.<br /><br />The riders figured the planes were just coming by to say hello, "buzzing" them, in airmen's parlance. It was said that aeroplane pilots were overly friendly chaps. Reconnaisance pilots from both sides would often wave at each other as they passed their opposite numbers in the sky, as if the slaughter raging down below had nothing to do with them. It was rather quaint, how out of touch they were. Best just to ignore them.<br /><br />None of the riders ever expected what came next. There had been efforts to equip dragonriders with machineguns, but it had never come to anything. Not only did the beasts have a tendency to get spooked by the noise, but the recoil also made flying difficult. Caeryd and company just assumed that it would be the same for the aeroplanes, perhaps minus the spooking issue.<br /><br />By the time they heard the sound of machinegun fire, it was already too late.<br /><br />Rettas, the lad off Caeryd's left flank was the first to go. The Krausian guns took his head clean off and shredded his dragon's right wing to a mess of blood and bone. A trail of red followed the screaming dragon and the headless corpse as they spun towards the shell-blasted ground below. Another dragon took a shot clean through the eye, killing it instantly. Its rider, himself uninjured, struggled to free himself from the saddle as they plunged earthward, dissapearing through a cloud.<br /><br />Callain tried valiantly to avenge his fallen comrades. He pulled up, trying to gain altitude on the planes, to incinerate the flimsy wooden things from above. No use. Their expertly aimed fire tore him to shreds in a hail of burning lead.<br /><br />The anguished roar of his dragon, the mighty Irontail, may have been simply from the bullets she had taken, or perhaps from the loss of her bleloved master with whom she had travelled so far and earned so many victories. Either way, she did not go quietly.<br /><br />Though wounded, she lashed out at the nearest fighter, her terrible claws smashing its flimsy wood and canvas body to shrapnel, her fearsome tailbarb gutting the pilot like a fish, even through his tough leather flight jacket as he was thrown from the wreckage. She would not savour her revenge long, as another fighter was soon raining lead upon her. Even after she was dead, her carcass continued soaring towards her killer. He barely managed to evade the fireball as the grand old war dragon burst into flames in midair. His moustache was singed by the convective heat but his craft was still going strong thanks to its fire-retardant paint. Scattered embers that were once brick-red scales stuck to the wings, where they continued to glow for minutes afterward.<br /><br />In a matter of seconds, Caeryd was the last one left. He rolled out of the way of one stream of machinegun fire, then another. At least they were easier to see coming than usual. For some reason, the aeroplanes' guns were loaded entirely with tracer rounds. He would soon find out why.<br /><br />Caeryd desperately tried to escape the fighterplanes' brutal assault by diving into a nearby cloud. Stupid. He turned his back to them. He turned his head to see one of the planes bearing down on him. It was all over before he could even attempt another daring maneuver.<br /><br />The bullets tore into Sunfang's body. Their burning phosphor coating set the perilous hydrogen gas in the dragon's flight bladders alight and Caeryd found himself drowning in a river of flame.<br /><br />His clothes had been treated with the same fire repelling tincture as the aircraft's paint, for all the good it did him. The intense heat blistered his skin and set his hair aflame. There was no room for anything else in his mind now but pain. Sensations a billionfold as horrific as riding through the skies had been wonderful. His organs of generation ruptured then crisped in his trousers like overcooked sausage. His fingers turned to ash and fell away as he attempted to free himself from his harness. His flying goggles cracked from thermal shock, releasing a fine white mist that had once been his eyes.<br /><br />Caeryd remained conscious, if such a term is appropriate for a state of pure agony, the whole way down to the ground, trapped on the back of Sunfang's flaming skeleton as the fire devoured him. Not even the impact with the ground was meciful enough to end his suffering, softened as it was by the pounding of countless shells.<br /><br />All around him, men with guns were fighting, screaming, dying. He tried to call out for help, for somebody to end his suffering, but no. They could not hear him over the noise of machineguns and artillery. Those who did notice the flaming mess assumed he was already dead. He tried to move, but his spine and most of his other bones were shattered. Nothing to do but continue suffering.<br /><br />It would be three hours and ten minutes before Caeryd finally expired from his wounds. Not long after, his earthly remains and those of his dragon were reduced to powder by the explosion of an artillery shell, saving his kingdom the expense of an interment.<br /><br />Luftskapitan Edvarte von Skutte, leader of Krausia's first Luftskampfer squadron was awarded the prestigious Sapphire Cross for his actions in the repel of Operation Halberd. Though the war would grind down to a protracted stalemate that would last another four long years, the age of the dragonrider had ended forever.E. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1886021869347606573.post-85306345744023213342013-10-28T19:26:00.001-07:002013-10-28T19:26:56.928-07:00The MuralsWe all have irrational fears when we're little. Sometimes we look back on them and laugh, other times that sense of dread never really goes away.<br />
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For me it was TV test patterns. I don't know if it's the noise or what, but they always freaked me out as a child. I remember one station had one with a picture of a little girl on it. I'd see her often in my nightmares. Sometimes I'd dream I was walking into the kitchen to get a glass of milk and she'd be there, playing with a carving knife, looking me up and down with eyes filled with a lust I was too young to understand. There was a girl who looked just like her in my class in first grade. I always avoided her, until one day at recess she ran up to me with tears in her eyes asking what she'd done to make me not like her and I was so utterly embarrassed at myself.<br />
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She was the girl who gave me my first kiss. Test patterns haven't bothered me as much since then.<br />
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For my little sister it was murals. There was one painted on the wall of the lobby of our apartment building, a pastoral, though derivitive, scene of families picnicking in a park, and she'd always hide behind me or our parents when we went out. If we passed by one painted on the side of a building or something, it'd be the same thing.<br />
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When asked why she found them so upsetting, she'd tell us she believed there was something hiding in them. That sometimes she could see something moving in them out of the corner of her eye. Our parents always tried to reassure her, of course. Told her it was just her imagination, that nothing was going to jump out of them and get her. And of course, she was still terrified of them.<br />
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One day as we were heading off to school, I was in 8th grade, my sister in 1st, she pointed out something to me in the lobby. There was a man in the mural who hadn't been there before. I did indeed see what looked like a man's figure silhouetted in the shade of the trees in the background, which I'd never noticed before. Still, I didn't think much of it. My sister insisted it was never there before, but I was skeptical. After all, how would she know, I mocked her, if she was always too scared to look at the thing for more than a second? She was angry that I didn't believe her and pouted at me all through the bus ride to school, but I didn't think much of it until a week later.<br />
As we got out of the elevator and started through the lobby, my sister let out a horrible scream. She pointed wildly at the mural on the wall, shrieking and crying incomprehensibly before running back into the elevator. As the door closed, I curiously inspected the painting. It took me a while to notice it, but I saw what had freaked my sister out so badly.<br />
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The shadowy figure in the trees appeared to have moved closer.<br />
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I had to have been imagining it, but the figure was much bigger than I remembered it, much closer to the foreground. Not only that, it wasn't completely silhouetted anymore. I could make out that the figure was wearing brown shoes and dark grey trousers, but the upper body remained cloaked in shadow. As I stared at the mural in disbelief, it dawned on me that this figure was the only one standing on its own. All the other people in the picture were sitting down or playing with friends and family, but not this one. He was just standing around in the shadows.<br />
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Eventually I rationalized it as a prank by either the original artist or some clever vandal to scare people. It hadn't moved, it probably just looked like it did when the light hit it differently. I went back up to the apartment to fetch my sister again and dragged her off to school, again, thinking no more of it, though from then on both of us generally avoided looking at that damn wall. Supernatural or not, it was certainly unsettling and once you notice a hidden thing like that it can never be unseen...<br />
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Except, this time, it could and was. Around the beginning of September, when I was preparing for the nightmare that was highschool, meaning I now had to be up one hour earlier than my dear little sister and thus spared of her antics in front of the mural, I noticed that the shadowy figure had dissapeared. I was rather surprised when I noticed the change and spent a confused minute looking all over the wall, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe somebody complained about how creepy it was and it got painted over... though, I never noticed any painters around the place.<br />
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I didn't have much time to ruminate on it, as the new loads of homework I was saddled with everyday kept me pretty busy. The occasional reminder would come, though, when my sister would sometimes come home shivering, saying she'd seen the Shadow Man in another wall somewhere. Once it was a grafitti-covered alleyway, another time it was on the school gymnasium. My parents and I felt she was getting a bit too old for this nonsense and did our best to ignore her when she got that way.<br />
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Then, one day, she didn't come home from school at all.<br />
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For weeks, it was total chaos. The police bombarding our family and anyone who had ever come into contact with us with questions; CSIs ransacking the apartment, looking for any piece of evidence that could be used to pin it on us; my mother barely able to speak through anguished sobs; my father stomping around in a rage so intense I swear I could see steam rise out of his ears, swearing a bloody vengeance on whoever had taken his only daughter away from him. And in the middle of it all, there was me, a stupid, awkward teenager, desperately wishing he could do something to help, all too aware that he couldn't.<br />
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As the months passed, I watched helplessly as the case went cold and my family slowly came apart at the seams. Dad took to the bottle. Mom just sat around, doing nothing, like she was waiting to die. Sometimes I'd have to force her to eat. It wasn't long before I began to resent my parents. We were all in a lot of pain over our loss, but they were completely consumed by it. Didn't they realize they still had each other and another child to think about?<br />
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I fell in with a bad crowd. Seemed the natural thing to do, I suppose. Started skipping class to drink and do drugs with other juvenile delinquents. Trying to forget how much I missed my sister's sweet little songbird voice, how much I missed having actual parents. Grew up too fast. Just fourteen years old, hiding under the stairwell on the bottom floor of a deserted parking structure, trying to enjoy the feeling of pierced pink lips and smooth, chubby thighs while keeping an ear out for the security guard.<br />
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But enough of that nonsense.<br />
<br />
I suppose by now you're wondering where I'm going with all this. I guess the best place would be my 16th birthday. A bunch of us ne'er-do-wells had gotten together on the beach after dark. Somebody rolled an empty trashcan out onto the sand and we started a bonfire in it. Beer and cheap wine flowed like water and that's exactly how we drank it down. By the middle of the night, I was feeling a bit poorly, and had to run to the nearest Parks and Rec building, only to find the washroom doors were already locked, so I leaned against the wall and threw up into the sand. When I finished, I got a good look at the wall, illuminated by the glow of the nearby bonfire.<br />
<br />
It was a mural. A scene of happy beach goers, not unlike a maritime version of the one back in the lobby of that apartment building. But, like that one, there was something amiss.<br />
<br />
At the shore, there was a small, dark lump of tattered cloth and scraggly hair. Two seagulls perched upon it, one with its head and the bold, heavy brushstrokes of its wings raised high, beak wide open, squaking in triumph; the other, looking more dignified with its wings folded, was digging its beak into the carcass.<br />
<br />
I couldn't see her face, but I didn't need to. I knew at that instant, the fear she must have felt. That utter, irrational terror, and worse, for I was no longer a child.<br />
<br />
I no longer had the hope of outgrowing the fear and despair that consumed me. I would never be able to look back on it and laugh.E. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1886021869347606573.post-78628105509660325352013-10-25T02:20:00.001-07:002013-10-25T15:38:10.803-07:00Thaumoctopus mimicus: The Man on the Beach<i>Nothing else feels quite like it. So many different kinds of pain all at once. The suckers, thousands, each yanking a tiny piece of flesh, all at once; the crushing muscle of the tentacles; the harsh, tearing beak.<br /><br />Couldn't say which is the worst part. In the end, it doesn't matter...</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><i> </i><br />
When you have a really monotonous job, as most people do, things tend to run together. One day is the same as any other. Which is why, when something out of the ordinary happens, we tend to remember it. It might be a particularly irritating customer, something amusing a coworker did, a horrific on the job accident. These things stick with us.<br />
<br />
"Remember the time when..."<br />
<br />
Everybody's got at least one.<br />
<br />
Of course I've got some.<br />
<br />
Like the time I was working construction and another worker fell three stories onto the concrete pavement below. We all feared the worst, but after a few seconds of lying on the ground in pain, he picked himself up, dusted himself off and stumbled off to the first aid station. I remember the man I was eating lunch with at the time shouting "he's OK, folks", in an imitation of a racetrack announcer after a crash when the man stood up.<br />
<br />
Or when I worked as an R.O. on election day and one of the voters, informed that, due to the vagaries of government bureaucracy, the poling station for her district was several miles away, despite the fact that she lived two blocks from where we were, became irate and spat in the poll clerk's face.<br />
<br />
But aside from anecdotes trotted out when there's nothing else to talk about, they rarely make a difference in the long run. We always go back to work the next day, same as always, back to our dreary lives to await the next island of interest in a sea of banality.<br />
<br />
But this next one is different. This time, something happened that changed everything. Something so hideous and awful that I've never been able to look at the world the same. Can't look at people the same...<br />
<br />
<br />
It was a typical July day at the beach. The sun shining brightly in the blue sky, a cool breeze blowing in off the water, children playing in the sand, enjoying their two and a half months of freedom.<br />
<br />
To anybody else it would have seemed positively idyllic. Me, on the other hand, spent most of the time somewhere between boredom and irritation, as I was working at the beachfront snack bar. My day consisted mostly of leaning out an opening in the front of a concrete bunker, serving ice cream and soda to annoying children and middle-aged people clad in swimwear that was clearly not designed for them.<br />
<br />
It had been a slow day and I was bored half-catatonic, praying to whatever god would listen for something to happen. It seems they were only too happy to oblige.<br />
<br />
It was around noon when I heard a woman scream. I looked to where it was coming from and saw that something rather nasty looking had washed up on shore.<br />
<br />
It was a body.<br />
<br />
In a fit of morbid curiosity I deserted my post for a closer look. It was an appropriately disgusting sight. The skin was a pale, mottled, greenish grey and covered in strange, round marks, what remained of his clothes were nothing but tattered rags and it was obvious the myriad scavengers in the sea had had their way with him. He was missing a large chunk of his lower torso on the right side, his left arm and right leg were nowhere to be seen, his eyes were both gone and perhaps most disturbingly of all, the poor bastard's lips and much of his cheeks had been eaten away, giving him a twisted, skeletal grin. I only glimpsed it for a minute, before somebody mercifully threw their beach towel over it.<br />
<br />
A mother covered her children's eyes and led them away. A man vomited and discreetly kicked sand over the sick. It was then I realized I wouldn't be selling much that day.<br />
<br />
The police were called and they took the carcass away. The body was believed to be a member of a rather extreme environmentalist group. There were concerns about overfishing in the area and a few weeks ago, four activists had set out in a small boat in an attempt to obstruct a commercial trawler. They succeeded in preventing the vessel from deploying its massive fishing net by firing a small improvised missile at the net mechanism. Unfortunately, this caused the entire net rig to collapse, bringing several tons of metal and netting crashing to the deck, killing two crewmen. Upon learning of the deaths, the captain of the trawler flew into a rage, retaliating by ramming the smaller boat, apparently killing all its occupants. We were advised to keep an eye out for the other three, as they had not yet been recovered.<br />
<br />
Even after the police had left with the corpse, an air of gloom persisted about the beach that day. Most people packed up and left, and few came to take their place. The only customers I had that day after the body washed up were a teenage couple, both exceedingly pale, dressed in black t-shirts with garish band logos. Not typical beach goers at all.<br />
<br />
"Let me guess," I said. "You're here to see the dead guy, aren't you?"<br />
<br />
I had surmised correctly & they were disappointed when I told them that the police had already come and removed it.<br />
<br />
They bought a fudge sundae and a large cherry slush, then sat on a bench on the boardwalk, sharing them while simultaneously making out. I distinctly recall the way the boy held the drink with one long, bony hand while he slipped the other under the hem of his more rubenesque paramour's shirt, caressing her ample breasts and belly.<br />
<br />
It's strange, the things you remember, isn't it?<br />
<br />
I decided it would be in poor taste to continue watching the happy couple and spent the rest of the day defrosting the freezer, then scraping the filth off the hotdog machine.<br />
<br />
It was just after sundown and I was closing up shop when I saw a man coming my way from across the beach. It was dark and I couldn't make out his features. He walked with a strange gait. I figured he was drunk, or worse. As he kept walking in my direction, I called out to him.<br />
<br />
"Sorry, man. I'm closing up for the day. I already cleaned out the register."<br />
<br />
I couldn't explain it, but I wanted him to go away. I couldn't even see him properly and yet I felt something profoundly unsettling about him. When I addressed him he stopped in his tracks for a moment, then to my relief, he turned away and left.<br />
<br />
After I had finished closing up, I was walking home when I saw him again. He was at the water's edge, walking into the sea. Then the really strange thing happened. When he'd walked out a ways, he seemed to collapse. Just fell beneath the waves. I thought perhaps he passed out drunk and as unnerved as I was by him, I decided to run out to see if he was alright. I stripped down to my boxers and waded out to where the man fell, but there was no sign of him anywhere. Not a trace. I shouted out for him, but nobody answered.<br />
<br />
I was baffled. There was no way the undertow could have carried him away from this close to the shore. Eventually I gave up. Maybe there had been no man. It was dark, I had a very morbid experience earlier that day, perhaps my mind was playing tricks.<br />
<br />
It briefly crossed my mind that perhaps what I'd seen had been the ghost of the man who had been washed up on the shore, but I quickly laughed it off. I'd never been superstitious before. I finally came to the conclusion that the events of the day were simply coloring my perception, that I should just go home and get some rest.<br />
<br />
It didn't help much. Even sleep couldn't extricate me from the previous day's influence. I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamed I was drowning.<br />
<br />
The ship was falling apart, capsizing. I went over the side in a shower of debris. Something hit my head on the way down and I blacked out. When I came to, it was too late. Couldn't make it up. Couldn't even tell which way was up. The water was too dark. I couldn't hold it in, I had to take a breath. My insides stung as they filled with saltwater. I was dead in seconds.<br />
<br />
<br />
Only I wasn't dead, I was still conscious. I couldn't do anything, I was completely limp, but I was still conscious. I could not do anything.<br />
<br />
And then the fish came at me.<br />
<br />
There were billions of them, some were the size of dogs, other could barely be seen with the naked eye. A blizzard of silver scales. They all crowded around, trying to get a bite of my inert flesh. The big ones went at my hands and face, the smaller ones found their way into openings in my clothes. Piece by piece I disappeared into their bellies. Great Whites circled around my corpse. They had no interest in dead flesh like mine, but they were happy to gorge themselves on the living fish I attracted. The violent dance of life and death continued for hours.<br />
<br />
Then, they scattered, trillions of fish, each zooming off in its own direction as quickly as they came.<br />
<br />
A dark shadow loomed in the sea and even the fearsome sharks were humbled, turning away.<br />
<br />
The giant octopus.<br />
<br />
Its tentacles stretched for miles in every direction. Its mantle was a submersible island. Its shape ever shifting, its color ever changing, but its massive eyes never straying from their goal.<br />
<br />
Somehow I knew... I knew what it wanted. It was more than a simple beast scavenging the carcass of a dead thing.<br />
<br />
It wanted me.<br />
<br />
And as its vast, membranous form enveloped me, drawing me toward its ravenous beak, hard as wrought-iron, surrounded by a pulsating, non-newtonian amorphousness, preparing to cut me to ribbons-<br />
<br />
My alarm clock went off. I didn't feel rested in the least.<br />
<br />
<br />
I spent most of the next day half-conscious. Fortunately, it was a rather overcast day, with rain that came down in brief, furtive spritzes, so it wasn't exactly busy. The only customers I had were a group of Parks and Recreation workers who had come to replace a broken water fountain. They packed up and left around 4:00. I decided to take the opportunity to have a discreet catnap, but there was nowhere comfortable to sleep in my cramped enclosure, so I resigned myself to the miserable fate of remaining on my feet until the end of the shift.<br />
<br />
Towards the end of the day, a tall, wiry middle-aged man in a sweatshirt and uncomfortable-looking shorts came up to me. I'd glimpsed him earlier that day and a few times before, jogging along the boardwalk, even through unpleasant weather, always with a small, black Scottie Dog by his side, without a leash, despite several signs posted in the vicinity informing the public of the leash laws. The dog wasn't with him this time. This was because the dog had wandered off and gone missing and since I was the only person around, the man wanted me to help him look for it. I was reluctant, but he seemed like a nice fellow, so I told him I'd help as soon as I finished closing up.<br />
<br />
There was a flashlight in a drawer under the the snack bar counter. I swept it around through the gathering darkness as the man, whose name was Joe Strugatsky, called out for his beloved pet.<br />
<br />
I thought I heard something moving amongst some trees opposite the beach, so I turned the flashlight towards them. I saw nothing, but heard the sound of something rushing away from us with great speed. We tried to run after it, but this phantom presence eluded us. We were walking back towards the shore, scanning the ground with the flashlight as we did, when we spotted something at the foot of a tree.<br />
<br />
Strugatsky let out a horrible wail and for the second time in as many days I found myself looking at a dead body. Despite being only a dog, this one was even more horrific than the corpse I'd seen before. It was in several pieces. All were terribly mutilated. The most recognizable part left was one of the poor beast's legs. The really strange thing was the inconsistency of the mutilations, though. It was difficult to tell, but some of the parts looked as if they had been torn off by some incredible force, while others were cleaner, as if removed with a blade of some sort. It was fascinating and repugnant.<br />
<br />
I did my best to comfort the distraught man, while masking my own apprehension. I knew of no animals that lived in this area that could do such a thing. How could this happen? Strugatsky decided to file a report with the police, while I finally went home, knowing I would get no rest that night either.<br />
<br />
I went into work the next day with a sense of foreboding, but almost nothing out of the ordinary happened. The skies were clear and the beach was crowded with people. I saw that couple again, this time somewhat more appropriately dressed. The girl was wearing a purple sundress that showed off five red and black stars tattooed above her generous bosom and carried a matching parasol in her plump, babyish hands. Her boyfriend was wearing the same shirt as when I last saw him, but had exchanged the tattered black denim trousers he was wearing last time for a pair of shorts that didn't flatter his peachfuzz-covered, gallusine legs in the least and he had also acquired a pair of sunglasses. Even with his arm wrapped affectionately around the girl's shoulder, he looked mildly uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
I asked them if they'd heard about the dog and they hadn't. Apparently the girl had enjoyed their previous visit and had felt like going again, dragging her lover along, despite his lack of enthusiasm. The young man asked me what had happened with the dog, but I said never mind, not wishing to think on it. They took their ice cream and went off to find someplace private while the boy grumbled about how crowded it was.<br />
<br />
Ah, young love...<br />
<br />
And so that's how it was for the next few weeks. Once more, one day was indistinguishable from the next. Even those two young lovers who I found so strange when we first met faded into the background of my daily routine.<br />
<br />
<br />
One day a man complained of his clothes and wallet being stolen. Made quite a scene, rushing around looking everywhere for them, accusing others of having taken them. A fight broke out and the police took him and the other combatant away.<br />
<br />
Not much interesting happened after that, until one cloudy, rainy day at the beginning of August.<br />
<br />
It had been sunny when I came in, but the weather had quickly deteriorated and I was contemplating closing early, when I saw a customer coming my way.<br />
<br />
Almost immediately I recognized him. That shifting, stumbling gait. It was the man I'd seen the day the body washed up, or else somebody with a similar affliction. As he got closer, I saw his deformity went well beyond his legs.<br />
<br />
He wore sunglasses, a T-shirt and shorts, both sopping wet, as well as a pair of running shoes, the laces tied rather poorly. His skin was... the colour was a fairly natural, if slightly speckled tan, but the texture was inconsistant. Too smooth in some places, too bumpy and wrinkled in others. His limbs had a bizzare, twisted, ropey quality to them. They didn't bend the way they should have.<br />
<br />
Then there was the face. His bald head was bulbous and drooping. He showed symptoms of some sort of hydrocephalic disorder. I couldn't see his eyes behind the silvery shades he wore, but the glasses rested on a mis-shapen nose and underdeveloped ears that looked as if they had been sculpted from putty. The mouth didn't even look like a mouth so much as a set of conveniently placed wrinkles.<br />
<br />
But the worst... the absolute worst part was seeing the whole mess move about. It stumbled and staggered, flopping bonelessly to and fro as it made its way towards me, closer, ever closer.<br />
<br />
I wanted to scream. I wanted to be physically sick. I wanted to run. This thing wasn't human. It couldn't be.<br />
<br />
And yet, it was standing on two legs. It wore clothes. What else could it be?<br />
<br />
I forced myself to remain calm. It was just a man, I told myself. A man afflicted with some deformity, but a man still. He doesn't need my revulsion. His life must be painful enough as it is. I should treat him with respect, like I do all my customers.<br />
<br />
I think I did a decent job of maintaining my composure when he came up to the counter to order. He pointed to a pan of cheap, probably substandard shrimp kebabs under a heatlamp with a floppy, syndactylic finger, then flipped and snaked his appendage into his pants pocket, pulling out a wallet, which he proceeded to empty infront of me, disgorging numerous soggy bits of paper, including several banknotes. The amount of money was enough for five kebabs. I asked if he wanted that many and he nodded his bizarre head, causing it to jiggle unpleasantly. I choked back some bile and handed him the food. Not waiting for his change, he shuffled off immediately.<br />
<br />
I just stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. What did I just see? I couldn't have hallucinated that, could I?<br />
<br />
Then I noticed he had left his wallet. Curious, I took a glance. They say everyone looks worse in their driver's licence photo. I could barely imagine what his was like. But the man in the photo was completely normal. In fact, it was somebody I recognized.<br />
<br />
The man whose clothes had been stolen.<br />
<br />
I put two and two together, rushing out after the strange teratoforme that had walked off with five kebabs paid for with stolen cash. I could see him at the waters edge. I yelled at him and he turned towards me.<br />
<br />
I don't know what I expected him to do. Certainly not what he actually did.<br />
<br />
His twisted limbs suddenly untwisted, his head sank into his torso, which billowed out and flattened. The dark glasses fell into the sand and his clothes collapsed into a pile.<br />
<br />
Out of that miserable heap there emerged a tentacle. First one, then another and finally, the largest octopus I had ever seen was revealed.<br />
<br />
Its skin's color and texture shifted and pulsated. Its tentacles flailed. In one it still held the shrimp kebabs. They quickly dissapeared beneath it and when they emerged, they were only sticks.<br />
<br />
For a moment our eyes met. They were a remarkable golden hue, like two enormous bullion coins, with inverted V-shaped pupils, black as the deep sea abyss itself.<br />
<br />
There was an abyss in those eyes. A deep, ancient intelligence that no common mammalian reason could ever truly fathom. It terrified me.<br />
<br />
When I was a child I had read a story about a monster with an octopus for a head. It was meant to be fearsome and hideous, but at the time it struck me as patently silly. Now I understood.<br />
<br />
I don't know how long we spent just staring at each other. Could have been seconds, could have been hours.<br />
<br />
I was so dumbfounded by the hideous sight I was completely unprepared for what happened next.<br />
<br />
I don't quite understand why... perhaps it realized its cover was blown and thought it too dangerous to leave a witness. Perhaps it is simply the nature of intelligent, or semi-intelligent life to not abide the existance of other species like unto itself. Whatever the reason, the beast attacked. Leaping through the air like a bolshoi ballerina, its tentacles propelled it with all the swiftness and grace its counterfeit humanity lacked. Its moist, rubbery weight hit me full on in the face and upper torso, driving me to the sand.<br />
<br />
I can scarcely describe the flood of horror, pain and disgust that overwhelmed me. I was in so many different kinds of agony at once. Tentacles of pure, cruel muscle wrapped around my arms, body and head, threatening to crush my bones. Its suckers hungrily tore at every inch they touched. I tried to scream as I felt my shoulder dislocate and ribs crack, but my mouth filled with its salty, slimy, suffocating bulk. Oblivious to the vile taste through terror, spite and encroaching hypoxia I bit down but its powerful folds resisted me. Responding in kind, it brought its ravening beak to bear on my neck.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it was the lack of oxygen, or the fact I was already overwhelmed with pain, but I barely felt it when the beak clipped my jugular. As the blood began to race out, the tentacles relaxed their grip. Convinced I was finished, the cephalopod slid off me and slipped back into the ocean. It all happened so fast I had no time to think. To think this could be it...<br />
<br />
The splash was the last thing I heard before everything went black.<br />
<br />
I woke up three days later in the hospital. Joe Strugatsky had found me lying there on the beach as he took his regular constitutional with his new dog. He applied first aid and called 911.<br />
<br />
I suffered a dislocated shoulder, three broken ribs, lost 3 pints of blood and my neck required 60 stitches. Almost immediately after I awoke, I was questioned by a pair of policemen about the attack. They thought I had been mugged. When I told them the truth, they almost arrested me right there for making false statements.<br />
<br />
They thought I was crazy, of course. I would have thought the same if I were in their position. The doctors kept me a few extra days for psychiatric observation. When they decided I wasn't a threat to myself or others, they cut me loose and told me to take a vacation, so I did.<br />
<br />
I'd saved up some money, so I decided to take a cruise on a luxury liner. I was reticent about going on the ocean, but an uncle of mine who been on the boat before highly recommended it. For the most part it was wonderful. The food was delicious, the acommodations were comfortable and we visited several beautiful tropical islands.<br />
<br />
I was so relaxed I nearly forgot my previous ordeal. Then, on the voyage home, the ship's security personnel were looking around for a stowaway. They didn't know who he was or where he came from, only that he was a lanky bald man wearing sunglasses. They told the passengers to keep an eye out for him.<br />
<br />
One night I was in the dining hall and caught a glimpse of a man who fit the description piling his plate high with morsels from the seafood buffet. He was a fairly average-looking fellow in a white polo shirt and tan trousers. Funny thing was he didn't eat his food in the dining hall, he took the plate out with him.<br />
<br />
I followed him out onto the deck. I was curious and decided to confront him about it.<br />
<br />
"You're that stowaway, aren't you? They're looking for you, you know?"<br />
<br />
A worried look crossed his face and before I could say "Man Overboard" he was over the railing, seafood platter and all. A man lept off the boat. An honest to goodness man. What splashed down in the water was not. A white polo shirt and tan trousers fluttered down to float on the surface a second later.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Many creatures use mimicry to misdirect potential predators or prey. The Corn Snake uses its similar markings to the poisonous Coral Snake to discourage predators. "Red to yellow kills a fellow, red to black, venom lack". Some butterflies have owl face-like markings on their wings for a similar purpose. The Ant Spiders have a similar shape to their insect namesakes and wave their front legs in the air like antennae to fool the colony into believing it is one of their number so it may prey upon them or their aphid livestock, a wolf-spider in sheep's clothing.<br />
<br />
There is only one animal known to man that can mimic many different animals depending on the situation. When a beast that preys on the Mimic Octopus appears, it will contort itself and change its color to take the form of a creature the predator will not eat. When a tasty morsel blunders into its territory, it assumes the shape of a creature its prey has no fear of, perhaps even one of their own. Sometimes a flounder, sometimes a mantis shrimp, sometimes a poisonous sea snake. They have quite an extensive repertoire. Possessed of a fierce intelligence, perhaps the greatest of any invertebrate, their problem solving skills continue to shock humans to this day.<br />
<br />
Though their habitat and food sources are threatened by mankind's greed, it may not be beyond them to find a new form to assume in order to survive...<br />
<br />
I know they're just trying to stay alive. I know it's our own damned fault. Doesn't make it any less unnerving. Every time I meet somebody's gaze, I fear for a moment I might catch another glimpse of that terrifying black and gold abyss...<br />
<br />
I haven't seen the ocean in many years. I studied journalism and got a job with a news agency as a foreign corespondent in Kyrgyzstan. It's a landlocked country. Probably the furthest place from the ocean you can get.<br />
<br />
It's hot, it's dry and it's boring.<br />
<br />
And I hope to God it stays that way.E. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1886021869347606573.post-90876707272792364082013-10-23T13:30:00.003-07:002013-10-23T13:31:52.908-07:00Psychidae: The Cabin in the ForestWhen I mention that I work for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, most people don't really know what to say. I don't blame them.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
Dealing with sexual abuse of any kind is difficult. With homicides, at least the victim's pain is over. With abuse cases, it never really ends. Many of the victims are so spiritually mutilated that they eventually become monsters themselves and begin the cycle all over again. I sometimes think it would be best for all concerned to simply put them out of their misery, but then, this line of work tends to harden one's heart if it doesn't destroy their mind first.<br />
<br />
When the subject of my work comes up in conversation, I usually answer simply that I'm an employee of ICMEC. Most people are content to let it drop.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, though, I get some wag who won't leave it at that. They want the details. I often get a foul whiff of an interest that goes much deeper and much darker than mere morbid curiosity from them. These people I resolve to keep an eye on, however distasteful the prospect of further contact with them may be.<br />
<br />
The question that comes up most frequently is usually something along the lines of "what's the weirdest case you ever had?". The answer to that, I suppose, all depends on your definition of weird. Disturbing as they may be, I've found that most child abuse cases have a sort of depressing banality to them, boiling down to some adult in position of familiarity and authority to a child misusing that position for their own grotesque ends.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it's a parent or other relative, sometimes a teacher, a friend of the family. Despite the coverage they often get in the media, I've only ever had any cases involving priests twice, though I have many co-workers who've had more than that. I think what often happens is that they join the clergy seeking relief, thinking the power of their god can free them from their monstrous urges, only to learn too late that bestial instincts will always triumph over the desire to attain the divine.<br />
<br />
Still, there have been a few incidents that stand out in my mind as out of the ordinary. Things that range from the ridiculous to the truly horrific.<br />
<br />
For an example of the former, an aquaintance once came to me with a problem. He had an underage daughter who was dating an older boy (who he rather despised) and because of my work he wanted my help getting rid of the young fellow. He'd had a private investigator (a rather cheap one, he was by no means well off) follow his daughter around while she was seeing her boyfriend, trying to gather evidence towards a statutory rape charge, but their physical intimacy never went beyond kissing, so that was out. There was something else, though. Like many couples they often went out together to eat. A background check on the boy soon added a strange new dimension to this common activity, however. He was apparently afflicted with what, I suppose, one would call a fat fetish. My acquaintance's daughter was a rather chubby young lady and her boyfriend apparently derived some perverse satisfaction from seeing her overeat. It was the man's intention to argue that his daughter's frequent lunch and dinner dates with this bizarre person thus constituted a sex act and he could be charged with statutory rape. He wanted my advice before taking him to court.<br />
<br />
I simply replied that, though the boy's behavior may be strange and frankly repugnant, there was nothing illegal about it and he had best not waste a judge's time. He ignored me, of course. The judge threw the case out and the whole thing only served to estrange his daughter from him.<br />
<br />
The couple got married when the girl came of age. I've actually seen them around a few times, they live in my neighborhood. They're quite a sight. Him, looking appropriately vagrant dressed in shabby, ill-fitting, baggy clothes adorned with rock & roll band logos or stylized marijuana leaves; her boteroesque figure straining the seams of some garish gothic ensemble. Lots of black and purple with cobweb prints everywhere. I find it suits her quite nicely, actually. After all, most arachnids have quite an immense size disparity between the males and females.<br />
<br />
Ah, but speaking of arthropods, I'm now reminded of an example of the second kind of strangeness I have encountered in my career.<br />
<br />
No, it's more than that. It may be the most awful thing I had ever personally encountered in my life. Something that shook my faith in humanity to its very core.<br />
<br />
I saw first-hand not only the utter ruination of an innocent child, but of every other person in her tiny world. I saw the end result of the decline of a once prominent family and was brought face to face with the twisted depths to which a man can sink.<br />
<br />
It all began when a couple of hikers in the north woods found the girl. She had crawled into their tent while they slept. Finding her curled up at the foot of their sleeping bags had come as quite a shock. She was shortly turned over to the local authorities. That's when I was notified.<br />
<br />
I should mention that it's a rare thing that I get directly involved in cases. The center mainly deals in information. I'm basically just a paper-pusher. I rarely liaise with local law-enforcement in person. The reason I did, let alone why I was asked to work the case at all was because of my familiarity with the territory.<br />
<br />
I was born in the small town of Winston, where they took the girl and had lived there until I was 19 years old. It was a fairly pastoral sort of place. Farmland to the south, trees to the north. The townsfolk were all friends, or at least acquaintances. I never felt like I fit in at all. I was never particularly social and I found life there incredibly tedious. Still, while I would never live there again, I do find, in this latter stage of my life, my occasional visits are a welcome respite from the noise, crowds and general anarchic atmosphere of the big city.<br />
<br />
<br />
The local sheriff was a friend of my father's. Had you seen him without his uniform, you would never guess at his occupation. He was an older gentleman of average height and build, with a grey walrus mustache who spent his free time at the local roadhouse, pint in one hand, pool cue in the other, telling tall tales to anyone who would listen. People loved him. He called me at work one day to inform me of the girl in their custody and asked if I could come take a look myself, since he didn't know quite what to make of her.<br />
<br />
When the girl was brought in she was a bit of a mess, but, physically, showed few signs of neglect. Though she had a petite build, she appeared well fed and her coppery-colored hair was surprisingly well-groomed for someone who had spent an indeterminate amount of time in the forest. Her age was estimated to be between nine and twelve years. She had apparently begun to menstruate quite recently and when she was found, there was dried blood caked around her inner thighs and other relevant anatomy. She was wearing nothing but a simple white silk slip at the time. One thing that stood out about her was that her hands and feet, though slender, had apparently grown faster than the rest of her, being close to adult size, wildly out of proportion to her small body.<br />
<br />
When I got a chance to speak with the child, however, I saw that something horrible had been done to her. No sexual abuse had occurred, as far as I could tell, but that's virtually the only mercy the unfortunate child was afforded.<br />
<br />
Children, to make use of a tired analogy, are like flowers. If they are not nurtured properly from the outset, after a certain point, they can never really grow. This child was a seed that could never sprout, doomed to a life in an institution, at best.<br />
<br />
If she had a name, nobody had bothered to tell her. Her grasp of language was rudimentary at best, picked up from a man who wasn't deliberately trying to teach her.<br />
<br />
This man, who may or may not have been her father, I gathered from the stunted, disjointed answers she gave to my questions, had kept her in a locked room in a cabin somewhere in the woods. He fed her regularly, gave her silk garments to wear, a washtub to bathe in and periodically changed the old-fashioned chamber pot she had been given to relieve herself in, but apparently did nothing else.<br />
<br />
She mentioned escaping once before, but the details were fuzzy. There was another room, she said, full of rooms like hers, but much smaller. There were others in them, prisoners like herself. Tiny prisoners. There were other things in that room as well, things, she recalled, that could go up and "stayed up". These things, whatever they were, scared her and when she screamed, she was discovered and returned to her room, apparently without further reprisal.<br />
<br />
I also gathered from her testimony that she had at least one brother, but he apparently had a higher degree of freedom than she did. She did not know much about him, only that he was there.<br />
<br />
The turning point that led to her escape had come when she began her period. As she described it "Came out red. It hurt". When her captor discovered this, he left her room for a moment, then returned with restraints and several sharp objects. She had no idea what was going on, but became afraid. In a surge of adrenaline, she reached for the moonsblood-soiled pot, cracked it over the brute's head, then ran through the door he had left open behind him. She left the cabin and didn't stop running until she found the campsite where she was discovered.<br />
<br />
That was all I could get out of her. It was a strange, sad experience. When I was done, she turned to some crayons and paper she had been given and went back to what she'd been doing before we started talking: drawing crude pictures of what, I though at the time, were butterflies.<br />
<br />
The sheriff had been right to call me. He was completely out of his depth with this one. Then again, so was I. I was familiar with cases of children being raised in near-complete isolation, but what happened before her escape puzzled me. It sounded as if the person holding her captive was attempting to perform surgery on her when she escaped. But for what purpose? And why wait until her menarche? Female circumcision (or Female Genital Mutilation, depending on the degree of cultural relativism being indulged in by the person describing it), perhaps? While it did cross my mind that this may have been the procedure that villain had attempted to perform on the girl, as it is often performed during early puberty, I decided it was unlikely. FGM is usually practiced by peoples from Africa and the Middle East, whereas that milk-complexioned, blue-eyed girl's tormentor was most likely her father. It seemed the only other possibility was that he had kidnapped her from somewhere and there was no record of a missing child that fit her description. The girl had no recollection of her mother. I suspect she didn't even know what a mother is.<br />
<br />
Another thing that baffled me was the cryptic reference to the tiny rooms and other prisoners within them. Apparently they weren't human, but the girl had found herself incapable of articulating what they actually were.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, I was unable to offer the sheriff much. All I could say was that he should have men comb the woods and try to find the cabin the girl had escaped from so that its sinister inhabitant could be brought to justice (although he likely suspected we were onto him and had probably abandoned the place by now) as well as to get the child into foster care as soon as possible, which was what he was planning to do anyway. Still, he praised me for being able to get the child to open up about her experience, since his men had trouble getting her to talk.<br />
<br />
I spent the night at my boyhood home. I had planned to rent a room at a motel, but my parents insisted. My old room had long since been converted into a walk-in display case. My father is an avid collector of military antiques. His most prized possession is the left boot Heinrich Himmler was wearing when he bit down on the cyanide capsule. I stayed in my younger sister's room. She had recently gone off to college and was sharing an apartment with a friend.<br />
<br />
My father had recently retired from his job as a security guard. He'd worked at the local bank for the past 15 years, since he was let go when his former employer, the PineCo lumber company was sold off to some multinational conglomerate or other. He was keeping himself busy with various projects, the current one being uploading his entire collection of home movies onto the computer. No easy task, considering the video camera used to create them, which he received as a wedding present, was not exactly a new model when he and my mother were married in the late 1970s.<br />
<br />
My father worked on this task late into the night and my attempts to get to sleep were often disturbed by his futile cursing at the newfangled machinery he was struggling with. Between that and my dear little sister's various posters of undead-looking so-called musicians staring down at me from around the room, I slept little my first night in town. Around one in the morning, plagued by insomnia, I headed downstairs to ask my father if he needed any help with the videos. He rebuffed me, saying he had finally figured out how to upload them properly and now had only to feed them all in and do some minor editing. As proof, he began playing one of the videos on the computer screen. The quality of the video left much to be desired, but this was most likely the fault of the original recording, rather than the computer. Something in the video caught my attention.<br />
<br />
It was a video of a wedding reception from over a decade ago. It was a rather gala affair, held in the ball room of a luxury hotel in the nearest city. The wedding had been the talk of the town at the time, though I had never paid much attention to such things in my youth and had only a vague idea of what was going on. The groom was Edward Pine, son of Trevor Pine, who was, at the time, the owner of PineCo and my parents' boss. My parents met when they were both working at PineCo, my father in security, my mother as the personal secretary of the lumber mill's manager. Neither of them worked directly for Pine himself, so it struck me as a bit odd they were invited to his son's wedding. My father explained that the Pine family had extended an open invitation to all its employees, most likely as a way to pad out the guest list. The younger Pine was a reclusive character with few, if any friends. It wouldn't do for an event held by such a prominent family to be sparsely attended.<br />
<br />
Seeing him in the video, I could understand Edward Pine's lack of social connections. Physically, he was fairly average looking. Nothing exceptionally attractive or hideous about him at all. But there seemed to be something off about the expressions of his pale, slightly long face. His body language seemed nervous and he often scratched at his mop of scruffy brown hair with a large, but slightly feminine hand when he apparently thought nobody was looking. His manner of speaking, too was unusual. When he stood up to give a speech it was clear that it had been prepared in advance, whereas when he was forced to speak candidly with guests, he sounded as if English was not his first language.<br />
<br />
I remarked that he seemed an odd fellow and my father agreed. He had heard many stories about the younger Pine and all the trouble he caused the family. There were rumors that the boarding school he had spent most of his teen years in was actually a reformatory or mental health facility of some sort. Most people seemed to agree that his wife had only married him to get at the family fortune.<br />
<br />
It was the bride, though, that caught my attention. More specifically, something she said.<br />
There was a scene of the wedding banquet, wherein the happy couple regaled the guests with tales of their courtship. The bride, Winnifred was her name, mentioned that she had always been embarrassed about the size of her hands and feet. She had always been teased about them as a child and had developed quite a complex about it. She said she knew Edward was the man for her when, on their first date, he told her she had beautiful hands. I could see why she would be embarrassed. Her hands were quite large.<br />
<br />
That's when it hit me.<br />
<br />
That girl at the police station had large hands and feet, as well. And when I looked closer at the bride in the video, I saw other similarities. Her hair was the same color, a sort of shiny golden brown, like freshly minted pennies. Her skin had the same milky complexion. The shape of her face, the narrowness of her shoulders, I believe her eyes were even the same color, though it was hard to tell, given the dubious quality of the footage.<br />
<br />
I felt I was looking at the woman that little girl could have grown up to be.<br />
<br />
I was not terribly familiar with the Pine clan, so I asked my father if he knew if Edward and Winny had any children. He replied that they didn't. The two of them had only been together two short years before she walked out on him and nobody had heard from her since.<br />
<br />
The next day I told the sheriff of my suspicion that our young Jane Doe may be related in some way to the former Mrs. Pine. He said that now that I mentioned it, he did see a resemblance. It would be quite fortuitous if that were the case, he told me, as the woman had been missing for over a decade.<br />
<br />
Her sister, a cellist in the Toronto symphony orchestra, had reported her missing in the autumn of 1998. A week before, Winny had phoned her sister, telling her of her intent to leave her husband and come stay with her in the city until she figured out what to do next. When a week went by with no sign of Winny, her sister notified the police. It was suspected that Edward had killed her, of course, but they could prove nothing. No body was ever found and eventually the case went cold.<br />
<br />
I decided to go through the files on the case. I started with the victim's background.<br />
Winnifred "Winny" Rockwell was born in Montreal in 1978. The Rockwells (no relation to the repulsively saccharine American painter) were an unremarkable working class family. Her mother was a waitress in a cafe, her father was a mechanic for the local bus service, her older sister had gone west to the U of T on a music scholarship the year after Winny was born. Things changed in the mid-1980s, however. Her father had invested a few hundred dollars in a computer software company started by an old friend of his from school. This company soon became quite successful developing software for the emerging home computer market and Mr. Rockwell's investment grew enormously over the course of a few years. He managed to parlay this boon into a small fortune with the help of a clever stock broker and by 1990 he had bowed out of his job with the public transit service to pursue a career in high finance.<br />
<br />
Winny had not adjusted well to her family's change in circumstances, however. At the age of 10 she was pulled out of the public school system and enrolled in a high-end private academy. The girl was quite resentful of this, as she had many friends at her old school and the so-called elite who populated her new one largely thought ill of "New Money" such as her family. She often got into fights and was expelled from several different schools. Winny spent most of her high school years at Greyrock Academy, an isolated English-style boarding school in the northern part of Alberta that had developed a reputation for catering to wealthy families with problem children.<br />
It was here she met her future husband.<br />
<br />
The two were married shortly after graduation. By all accounts it was not a happy marriage. With each passing month, Winny spent less time with her husband at the family estate and more driving down to the city, there to purchase extravagant new clothes at the boutiques, then drink and dance the nights away at the hottest clubs with friends, many of them male. All on her husband's (or rather his illustrious family's) dime, of course.<br />
<br />
Three months to the day before Winny vanished, she was involved in a brutal three-way brawl in an upscale downtown diner, involving her, her husband and a man called Jamal Simms, a minor rap musician better known by his stage name "Hi-Rof" which, I'm told, is meant to be a contraction of the firearms term "High Rate of Fire".<br />
<br />
Mr. Rof was treating Mrs. Pine to lunch on the patio when her husband, who had ventured into town to purchase supplies for his hobby, the breeding of exotic insects, saw the two of them together. A fight broke out which left all three of them bruised, bloody, in need of reconstructive dentistry and in the custody of the local police. No charges were ever filed thanks to the intervention of Pine the Elder, who allegedly paid the rapper an undisclosed sum of money and introduced him to an acquaintance in the recording industry who could help with his career.<br />
<br />
After this incident, little was heard of the couple. Winny was no longer seen in the city and her appearances on the grounds of the family estate were brief and furtive. Then came that fateful day in October when she informed her sister of her plan to leave her husband and disappeared. The last person to see her was apparently a taxi driver who had taken her to the nearest bus terminal.<br />
<br />
That was virtually all we knew about Winny Rockwell. Testimony from her friends had turned up nothing, though it was often guarded, probably because they didn't want too much to be known of her obvious infidelity. Though it may be in poor taste, I couldn't silence a nagging misogynistic voice inside me that said whatever terrible fate befell her, she had brought it upon herself.<br />
<br />
A week passed and the police found little in their search of the woods. We received several calls following the press release, but none bore fruit. Then, one day, a woman turned up at the station, saying she had some information.<br />
<br />
Her name was Keiko Verdi, a short, matronly woman of 55. She had once been the Pine family's maid, before being dismissed shortly after Trevor Pine's death 14 years previous. Before telling us anything, she insisted on seeing the little girl. The child had since been collected by Child Services, but we showed Mrs. Verdi a video of my interview with her. Seeing the poor girl, the woman broke down crying. She spent over a minute just sitting there in front of the screen in the audiovisual room, painful sobs wracking her plump body. After she had regained her composure, it all came pouring out.<br />
<br />
During her time in the Pine family's service, Mrs. Verdi, then Ms. Midorikawa, had always been profoundly disturbed by their son Edward. He was a deeply twisted child, prone to violent outbursts. He had once stabbed another child through the foot with a metal rake, resulting in the loss of at least one toe, at a garden party because he felt the child was making fun of him. He claimed to have visions of strange creatures from beyond the stars and would frighten anyone who cared to listen with hideously vivid descriptions of the apocalypse these beings had assured him was coming any day now. He showed no interest in the well-being of other people, but would become monstrously enraged, screaming hideously and attempting to mutilate anyone within reach with teeth and whatever sharp objects he could get his hands on, when his possessions were threatened.<br />
<br />
Despite his mental frailties, however, Edward was not an unintelligent child. He devoured various books of a scientific nature and could recite them all by heart. He was particularily enamoured of entomology. When he was not terrorizing people he could often be found collecting insects in the woods. Mrs. Verdi felt it was quite appropriate. In many ways he was closer to them than to humans. His was a dark, inhuman intellect, more befitting some cold, chitinous monstrosity than a person. If there really was such a thing as a soul, something to set us apart from the beasts that perish beyond mere evolutionary mechanics, Edward Pine had been born without one.<br />
<br />
Still, as horrible as he was, she couldn't help feeling some kind of sentimentality towards him. He was just a pathetic human defect. The awful things he did weren't his fault. She understood his family's often underhanded methods of extricating him from the problems he got himself into. As he grew older, his violent tendencies seemed to become less prominent and she felt herself warm up to him, though he was still a very bizarre, unknowable person. And she especially felt bad for him, the way his harlot of a wife treated him.<br />
<br />
Winny barely made any effort to conceal her gold-digging. She was only ever the least bit affectionate toward her husband when alcohol was involved. She often abused him verbally, comparing him unfavorably to the title character of Rain Man and other famous mental defectives. She went on outings without ever explaining why, to return home drunk at all hours. It began to have a rather nasty effect on the man...<br />
<br />
It seems his wife's vileness began to poison his perceptions of females in general. Edward became increasingly hostile to his mother and to Keiko. This new found misogyny also may have contributed to a particularly troubling incident which made the rounds of local gossip around that time. Edward had taken up bee-keeping during his teen years. There had been an elective class on it at Greyrock that he greatly enjoyed and after graduation his father had purchased a modest apiary for him. One night, in the spring before his wife's disappearance, Edward soaked it in gasoline and burned it to the ground.<br />
<br />
His lifelong interest in insects began to focus solely on the order lepidoptera, as they were one of the few types of insects wherein the males are typically more dominant, contrasting with the matriarchal social insects or the well-known misandry of the female mantis. He became particularly fascinated by the Psychidae, or bagworm moth group. The Psychidae are rather bizarre creatures. Nearly everything about them seems repugnant to our modern sensibilities. Voracious pests, they are adept at stripping trees of their leaves and their health. But it is their reproductive practices that are truly horrific.<br />
<br />
The male undergoes a perfectly ordinary life-cycle, changing from a caterpillar to a cocoon to a slightly dull-looking moth. The female is something else altogether. She will never know what it is to fly, she will never know freedom of any sort. She will never again move from the spot where she forms her cocoon, surrounded by a bag of silk, with leaves or other materials for camouflage. She simply sits there to wait for a male's seed, nothing more than a piece of reproductive machinery. And as if that wasn't bad enough, many species give birth to live young, the offspring tearing themselves from their mother in a display of arthropod body horror that would make a Giger or a Cronenberg envious.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it is wrong to be so repulsed by creatures only doing what their natural instincts compel them to. But for a human to do the opposite, to actually admire such grotesques, is a repugnant thing indeed.<br />
<br />
Mr. and Mrs. Pine began what amounted to a brief separation, when Edward was sent off to the city university to pursue an education in medicine, of all things, while his wife remained at the family estate. Much of her time there was spent listlessly wandering the grounds, or in private conversations with her parents-in law. Mrs. Verdi had been too polite to eavesdrop, but she occasionally heard raised voices and could tell the mood was quite tense.<br />
<br />
Things came to a head on Edward's first return home. One of the first things he wanted after his long time away was sex. When his wife refused to touch him, he became irate. A fight broke out. Winny made the call to her sister. Edward caught her at it.<br />
<br />
Then, Mrs. Verdi dropped the bombshell. Edward had dragged his wife outside, kicking and screaming into his car, while the entire household simply looked on. It was a callous thing to do, but they, too had grown tired of her and could not abide the way she had been using her husband.<br />
<br />
The two of them drove off and were gone all night. When the car pulled up sometime after noon the next day, only Edward emerged.<br />
<br />
He could not be made to explain what he had done with her, no matter how his parents tried. Finally, when asked point blank if he had killed her, he reluctantly answered yes, before returning to his room. His parents were distraught, of course, but they knew it had been a long time coming. They had decided a long time ago, when they realized what their son was, that they would still love and protect him, no matter what. Self-sacrifice is a parent's duty, is it not? Particularly parents of such horrendous psychological deformities.<br />
<br />
They found a taxi driver and paid him a princely sum to secure their son's alibi. The police investigation was furiously stonewalled by the Pine family and its associates and was eventually dropped. Winny Rockwell had simply vanished, they said. Perhaps she did not want to be found.<br />
<br />
I asked Mrs. Verdi if she had any idea where the body was. She said that Edward had never told. She did, however, have an idea of where it might have been. The Pines didn't have much property left nowadays. Most of it had been sold off, following the parents' deaths. On Edward's second vacation from school, he got into a furious argument with his mother. All Keiko could remember of the incident was that she mentioned seeing something during one of her frequent hikes through the woods. The next day, she was found collapsed in the garden. She was rushed to the nearest hospital, but pronounced dead on arrival. The cause of death was determined to be a cerebral embolism. It can occur naturally, but can also be induced by injecting air into the veins with a hypodermic needle. It was impossible to tell which in this case, as Mrs. Pine was a diabetic and had frequent insulin injections, thus needle marks were commonplace on her body. The coroner ultimately ruled natural causes.<br />
<br />
Trevor Pine was hit badly by his wife's passing. He had always been the picture of health, despite his advanced years, but after what happened to his wife, he seemed to age decades overnight. He did not leave the grounds of his mansion after the funeral and conducted the few business meetings he could by phone. Less than three months after his wife's death, he died in his sleep from heart failure. This had not come unexpectedly. It is fairly common for older men in long marriages not to survive their spouses by a great margin.<br />
<br />
Edward had no interest in the family business. He sold off almost everything, including the controlling share in the PineCo lumber company he'd just inherited to a multinational conglomerate. They bought out the board of directors, laid off half the staff and replaced the entire middle management with their own people from headquarters. He even sold the sprawling Pine family estate to a developer who promptly turned it into a resort hotel. Practically the only thing he kept was a small hunting lodge his grandfather had built in the forest, which he had even remodeled over the years. Keiko suspected it was here that Winny's corpse was kept, though she could not say for sure. She had been let go when the manor was sold. Though she had moved away, married, started a family, she had still carried the twisted secrecy of the Pine clan with her all these years, until she had heard that an innocent child may be involved. Though she had no idea how, she knew that our Jane Doe was their daughter and could not allow the circumstances that had scarred her to continue.<br />
<br />
She seemed so calm when we locked her up as an accessory to kidnapping and murder, like a great yoke had been lifted. I suppose the other investigators and I felt the same. Despite everything, it looked like the end was finally in sight. All that remained was to find Edward Pine. This was easier said than done, however. He had always been reclusive and in the time since his father's passing, he had dropped completely off the radar, shortly after his involvement in another criminal investigation, this time as the victim.<br />
<br />
Edward lived in the city for a few months after his father's death. He continued his education at the university, though it was not going at all well, as he often skipped class to indulge in his bizarre hobbies. One afternoon, while on his way home from one of his infrequent appearances in class, a car pulled up alongside Edward as he walked along an empty street. A passenger opened the window and emptied an entire .357 magnum revolver at him. Half the shots missed entirely. Of the other three one hit him in the right leg, another in the right side of his chest, the last in the left side of his face, destroying his eye.<br />
<br />
Nobody remembered the sound of the gunshots. The man who called 911, the clerk at a convenience store at the end of the block, was alerted instead by the victim's agonized screaming before he fell unconscious from blood loss.<br />
<br />
Edward was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors were able to perform lifesaving surgery. His attempted assassins were determined to be two men by the names of Lester Coffan & Cassidy Huinn. Both in their early 20s, they were a pair of old school chums who had grown up together in Toronto's notorious Regent Park district and had already been involved in a few minor offenses together, mostly drug related. The day after the shooting, a patrol car attempted to pull them over on highway 401. The police had no idea who they were and suspected no wrongdoing at first. One of the bolts that held the car's licence plate on had simply come loose and the plate was hanging off the bumper. However, when the police tried to pull the car over, it sped off and they were forced to give chase. It lasted several hours and finally concluded on a lonely dirt road just outside of Woodstock, when the fleeing suspects' vehicle exhausted its fuel. Huinn then exited the car and fired at his pursuers with a magnum revolver. Most of his shots missed, but he did strike one officer in the chest, breaking several ribs, a shot that would have been fatal if not for the policeman's bulletproof vest. The downed officer's partner responded in kind and dispatched Huinn, who was not wearing a vest, with two shots to the heart. Coffan was taken into custody. Though he lawyered up as soon as he was brought in, ballistics soon matched the bullets taken from Pine to his late friend's revolver and he was brought to trial.<br />
<br />
Coffan plead guilty to one count of attempted murder. However, he refused to say why he and his friend had tried to kill Pine. Though there was nothing unusual in his own financial records, his mother had recently received a $50,000 deposit to her account, in cash, which she used to purchase a cottage in the countryside to retire to. It never was determined where the money had come from. There was no shortage of people with motive to kill Edward Pine. The PineCo workers who had lost their jobs, Winny's friends and family who still blamed Eward for her disappearance, probably her death. Some even suspected Pine's one-time romantic rival, Jamal "Hi-Rof" Simms, now a successful rap star, of ordering the hit, as it was discovered he and Coffan had been neighbors during their youth. It is unlikely it will ever be known now. Coffan died of a drug overdose while out on bail the day before his sentencing hearing was supposed to resume.<br />
<br />
Pine had been present at Coffan's sentencing. It was quite a spectacle. The man was obviously doped to the gills on painkillers. I caught a glimpse of a video of the proceedings. It actually would have been quite funny if I hadn't known what a monster he really was. He stumbled around and a few times the cane he used due to his leg injury slipped out from under him, leaving him a pathetic heap on the floor. Despite his trouble walking, he still attempted to rise from his seat at several inappropriate times and had to be forced back down by a bailiff. His testimony was a string of incomprehensible mumbling punctuated by bizarre, non-sequiturial outbursts. The last straw was when he passed out on the stand. His head fell and hit the stand, causing his glass eye to pop out and roll around the floor. He then flopped down out of the chair and wriggled about on the floor looking for it. The judge exasperatedly ordered the court officers to remove this sub-human thing from his courtroom, as it was clear they weren't going to get any useful testimony out of him and suspended the proceedings for the day.<br />
<br />
This was Edward Pine's last public appearance. Much was made at the time of how low the Pine family had sunk. Five generations from the lumber company's founder Noah Pine, a self-made man, once a lowly foot soldier in the War of 1812 who had parlayed a bonus he received for courage in the field into a successful lumber mill, to this bizarre, mumbling, incomprehensible degenerate, his every action shattering the common misconception that Darwin's theories predict life will always move towards some anthropomorphic notion of "progress", making a mockery not only of his illustrious ancestors, but humanity as a whole before an entire courtroom and cameras as well. It was no wonder somebody wanted him dead. You had to wonder if it could even be called murder in his case. Seeing him like that, you had to wonder if animal cruelty might have been a more appropriate charge.<br />
<br />
They say he would have been even worse without the drugs. Every time he came down off them he began screaming and crying uncontrollably over the loss of his eye. Pathetic.<br />
<br />
I suppose you may think I judged the man too harshly. Being so repulsed by him, even though I did not know at the time whether the accusations against him were true or not. The truth is it had nothing to do with the crimes he was accused of. I hated him for the way he lived. The way he lived with his illness. I have no sympathy for the mentally ill when they allow their sickness to control them.<br />
<br />
I've had my own struggles with mental health. No, I will not discuss them. People today are so obsessed with talking about things. They tell themselves talking helps, but really it only distracts one from doing. We live in a grotesque, castrated shadow of a civilization, where more people would rather talk than do, would rather feel than think. It's a seductive thing, to share your misery with another. I've seen it enough in my life and in my work. It can be cathartic to open up to somebody, but that catharsis can become like a drug. We become addicted to other people's attention and pity, so we continue to seek it out, rather than making the effort to improve our lives. Sometimes it is better to suffer in silence. There are some things that are nobody else's business.<br />
<br />
Do you see now why I hate that man so? He made no effort to control himself. To live like a human being, with human dignity. Perhaps his parents are partly to blame, but my conviction is that if a grown man cannot muster the will to extricate himself from the malign influences in his life, he does not deserve respect, only contempt. I suppose that's why I like working with children. I want to do whatever I can to make sure no more grow up to be "people" like that.<br />
<br />
Though Edward Pine had moved away from the city and dropped off the society radar after the trial, we found he still occasionally made appearances at Bob's, a roadside gas station/general store to purchase various necessities. We also located a map showing the whereabouts of the Pine family hunting lodge. It was deep in an isolated part of the woods. No surprise the earlier patrols had missed it. All that was left was for the sheriff and his men to head out and take Pine in for questioning, assuming of course he had not fled. The sheriff asked me to come along. The little girl had mentioned there may still be a young boy there, which, if true made this Center business. I agreed to ride up with them. I had a certain morbid curiosity. Edward Pine seemed to me such a repulsive person. I just had to see him with my own eyes...<br />
<br />
There were five of us riding in two police cars. Myself, the sheriff and a police sergeant named Audry in the lead car, two officers in the other. Normally the second car would not be necessary for simply bringing somebody in for questioning, but given Pine's history of mental illness and the likelihood there were still guns in the cabin, the sheriff was taking no chances.<br />
<br />
We didn't talk much on the way over. The sheriff handed me a sidearm "just in case", but told me I should head back to the cars and take cover if shots were fired. We confirmed the plan that had been discussed beforehand. An audible bumping and scraping, as well as a feeling smiliar to a very badly made massage chair signified the end of the paved road.<br />
<br />
Eventually, we came to the end of the dirt road as well. It was all on foot from here. We saw Pine's car parked at the road's edge. It was a dark blue sedan. It had once been a high-end model, but had clearly fallen into a similar state of decay as the family that owned it. The lower edge of the body, particularily around the wheel-wells had been devoured by rust, the windshield was a spiderweb of chips and cracks, all but one of the hubcaps were absent and the hood was a veritable public restroom for birds. Those white spots and streaks gave the dark indigo hood the look of the starry sky on a clear night in the countryside. It would have been beautiful if it weren't so disgusting.<br />
<br />
Aside from its deplorable condition, nothing about the vehicle appeared amiss, so we struck out into the woods. The two officers from the other car went on ahead. They were to circle around the cabin to make sure everything was secure while the rest of us went to the front door. If we saw any sign of the boy or anything else out of the ordinary, we would arrest Pine and search his cabin due to extenuating circumstances. Otherwise we were simply to bring him back to the station. I had a feeling the sheriff doubted he would come quietly. In fact, I'm sure he was certain of it. How was he planning to explain the second car to a man who was only being brought in to answer a few questions?<br />
<br />
The sense of foreboding was palpable as we trudged ever deeper into the forest. In the sky above, a thick bank of clouds rolled in from the south, obscuring the sun and ensuring even less light filtered down to us through the thick forest canopy. It was not long after noon, but in the dark woods it was already night. We made no sound except that of our boots crunching across the uneven ground. I could vaguely hear the other two men off in the distance.<br />
<br />
As we walked, I would occasionally look back, to see the opening in the treeline where we came in vanish into the horizon. Though I would not admit it, I was terrified of getting lost. There were no discernable paths on the ground. It was all plants, mosses, stones and roots, not a spot of flat ground in sight. Our ankles were getting extremely sore from the chaotic terrain. We used a GPS-equipped satellite phone to navigate through the thick forest. Several times along the way our hearts sank as the signal was lost to the worsening weather, but then Audry would fiddle aimlessly with the antenna for a bit and that would somehow restore it to life. We were coming close to the cabin, I could vaguely see it behind some far off trees, when things started going to hell.<br />
<br />
The tense silence of our journey was broken by a blood-curdling scream and a gunshot. The sheriff picked up his radio to call the other officers. Things had gone very bad very quickly. We rushed to their position to find what was, up to that point, the worst sight I had ever personally seen.<br />
<br />
We found one officer, visibly in shock, service weapon still clutched in his trembling hand, standing over two dead bodies. One was his partner, blood from his open jugular artery pooled on the mossy ground in a decidedly un-christmaslike combination of red and green. We tried our best to apply first-aid, but it was hopeless. His head had struck a large rock as he fell. Even if he hadn't bled out, he would still be dead, or worse.<br />
<br />
It was the other corpse though, that was truly disturbing. It had been dispatched with a head shot, going in through the left eye and coming out the other end, taking most of the brain with it, some of which had splattered repulsively on a tree behind where the deceased had been standing. Police are trained to aim for the center of mass. Head shots are notoriously difficult with anything less than a precisely aimed sniper rifle. Pure dumb luck, he told us with an unnerving detachment. It had all happened so fast, he didn't even know what he was shooting at. When he bent down to take a look at his erstwhile opponent, he dropped the gun and collapsed in a gibbering heap.<br />
<br />
Jane Doe had mentioned having a brother somewhere. We had just located him.<br />
<br />
The boy could not have been more than 14 years old. His blood-soaked face, with its remaining eye still open, staring sightlessly at nothing, was soft and androgynous, apart from a few scattered hairs about his chin. He was clothed in grey silk rags and his right hand still held the improvised polearm he had used to kill the policeman, which amounted to a length of broom handle, a buck-knife affixed to the end with duct tape. This all would have been enough of a sight, but the worst came when I took a look at the mouth.<br />
<br />
It had been sewn shut.<br />
<br />
I think I must have gone a little mad at seeing that. That was the moment I decided Edward Pine, if he was still here, was not leaving this forest alive. It had to end, I was certain of it. It was no longer a question of due process. Things like him have no business existing in this world.<br />
<br />
As the dead officer's partner remained with the bodies to await further backup, the rest of us went on ahead to the cabin. We forced the door and were promptly hit by an overpowering odour of mildew. The oppressive atmosphere of decay that hung about the place came as no surprise to me at this point, but was no more pleasant for its predictability. The place was poorly lit, most of the bulbs had burnt out and the windows had been boarded over. We quested about the place, guns drawn, fearing some new horror might jump out at us from one of the narrow corridors that the cabin had more of than a hunting lodge has any right to. Cautiously, I tried one of the doors. The room was pitch black. I fumbled about for a light switch and when I finally located it, I witnessed yet another horror. At the far end of the room, there was a giant, hideous grey mass that moved indescribably in all directions at once.<br />
<br />
The shape shifted and billowed, scattering and recombining as it went. My eyes not quite adjusted to the light, I couldn't clearly make it out at first. I thought for a moment in that terrible cloud, I could see some demonic face, grinning at me, mocking me. Angered, I was just about to open fire on it when I began to make out what it really was.<br />
<br />
The moths. Hundreds of them.<br />
<br />
I hadn't noticed it as first, but there was a screen ten feet away from me that took up where the far wall once was before the place had been remodeled. There was now a dark, musty aviary that stretched a good 20 feet away. The adult moths bashed themselves vainly against the screen, trying to get at the light on the other side. Along the eastern wall of the place were numerous small cubbyholes. It was here that the females, the other prisoners the girl had mentioned, were kept.<br />
<br />
That's when it hit me. The women, the surgery...<br />
<br />
Bagworms.<br />
<br />
I knew what Pine had tried to do to his daughter. What he had already done to his wife. I prayed I was wrong, but already a horrible, sinking feeling of certainty had taken hold. When you're in my line of work, you come to despise being right.<br />
<br />
I sought out the sheriff to tell him about my hunch. He and Audry were in the basement. It was even more decrepit than the rest of the place, if such a thing were possible. What wallpaper there was had gone blistered and cracked from water damage. It was lined wall to wall with termite-ravaged shelves holding leaky canisters of innumerable household cleaners and other corrosives, some of which looked like they hadn't been touched in decades. Cobwebs decorated every corner. The concrete floor was badly stained and eroded and the only illumination came from a single naked bulb, barely clinging to life, hanging from the center of the ceiling.<br />
<br />
The stairs creaked worryingly under my feet as I made my way down to meet with the sheriff. He and Audry were inspecting a pile of cardboard boxes being used to hold various odds and ends. The insignia on the boxes was strangely out of place in this rustic pit. They were from a medical supply company. I was just about to tell the sheriff my suspicions when he shushed me. Though he was getting on in years, his hearing was sharp as any man's and he was certain he'd heard something moving down there.<br />
<br />
Cautiously, guns at the ready, we crept around in the dingy half-light, looking for the source. There was a small closet underneath the stairs. Audry tried the door and found it locked or otherwise obstructed, but it was no match for her boot. There was the sound of splintering wood, a yelp of shock and there he was.<br />
<br />
Edward Pine. He looked more or less like he did in the videos I had seen of him. He had a few grey hairs now, the texture of his skin was not as smooth as it had once been and he had grown a rather unkempt beard, but there was no mistaking him.<br />
<br />
It all happened so fast I barely remember it. For a moment I stared into his good eye, but he quickly looked away, unable to bear my gaze. Perhaps it was shame for his hideous actions, perhaps his mental illness simply made him averse to eye contact. There was a tense few moments he just stood there, looking nervously at the floor while the sheriff shouted at him to put his hands up and come out. Pine said nothing. As we moved towards him, he reached into his pocket. Somebody yelled "Gun!" and there was another loud crack.<br />
<br />
Head shot. Brains on the wall. This time it was his right eye. What are the odds?<br />
<br />
On later inspection we found the safety on Pine's pistol was still on. He might have simply forgot, but I doubt it. I think in the end, even he understood how wrong he was for this world.<br />
<br />
Oh how I wish that had been the end of it. But the worst was still yet to come. Even after that vile carcass had stopped twitching, there was still something moving around in there. We looked around and found a curious silken duffel, a little over a meter long hidden away under a shelf in the closet. Something inside was writhing about.<br />
<br />
We all just stood there for a moment. We were horrified, especially me, for I had already deduced what lay inside. Eventually our duty overcame our apprehension and we opened the bag. Almost immediately we were overcome by a stench so foul as to be indescribable to anyone who has never smelt its like before. Living things should not smell like that. If you can call what Mrs. Pine had been reduced to living.<br />
<br />
In the absence of limbs, the IV drip had been connected to a large vein in her neck. In fact, nearly all the moving parts, aside from the vertebrae had been removed. Even the lower jaw. I don't know how he managed it, how a medical school dropout could accomplish such surgical feats. I couldn't help being somewhat impressed in the midst of my revulsion.<br />
<br />
The sheriff made a valiant effort to run for the bathroom before his disgust won out and the already unsanitary floor of the basement became even more so. The rest of us just stood there in shock while Mrs. Pine writhed about in agony. Her limbs, eyes, ears, nose, even her tongue were long gone. She could only perceive the world now through her pale, sallow skin. She had no idea she'd even been rescued.<br />
<br />
No, that's not the right word. There was no rescuing her. He'd fixed it so no matter where she went, she would always be his prisoner.<br />
<br />
But perhaps worst of all was seeing her belly, swollen with yet another of that thing's children...<br />
<br />
It's been a few years since then. The girl was placed in the custody of her grandparents, who named her Christine. They sent her to a home that specializes in caring for feral children and those raised in extreme isolation. Her mother is also in institutional care. They think she understands she's safe now, but it's difficult to tell. Winny's third child was born two months premature and perished soon after. Christine is now all that remains of the Pine family and it is likely it shall die with her.<br />
<br />
I was offered an extended vacation after my ordeal but I turned it down. I just wanted to get on with my life. Looking back, that may not have been the wisest thing to do. Perhaps the scars I carry would not have set so deep if I'd taken the time to heal. Perhaps I would not have done what I did...<br />
<br />
Two months ago I had occasion to work with an autistic child displaying similar symptoms to the young Edward Pine. He terrified me. Images of Pine's mutilated family raced through my head and I could not dispel the conviction that this boy would grow up to be the same. God help me, he even had the same face.<br />
<br />
I won't go into detail about how I spirited him away from the foster home without being noticed. Wouldn't want to give anybody ideas. It's bad enough that I know.<br />
<br />
He was so scared, confused and angry. For a moment I thought about letting him go, but damn it, the memories of what I saw in that cabin in the woods, of those poor, ruined people just would not let me be!<br />
<br />
Cries and screams turned to gurgles that faded into nothing as I choked the life out of him. I placed the body in a garbage bag, filled it with rocks to weigh it down, then tossed it into the lake. Nobody suspected a thing, as far as I can tell.<br />
<br />
I think I understand now, why Edward Pine chose to end his own life the way he did. When I was told the child had gone missing, I wanted to scream out that I had killed him. I wanted to be free from that awful burden. But of course, I didn't. I acted shocked and concerned, I told the police I'd do anything I could to help. Somehow everybody swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I just couldn't bring myself to admit it.<br />
<br />
Every day the guilt gets worse and worse. I bought a length of rope at the hardware store and tied it into a noose, but of course I never used it. Every time I think I'm ready to answer for what I've done, my sense of self preservation kicks in and I go back to business as usual.<br />
<br />
I find myself thinking about the moths again. About animals in general, really. Instinct. It compels us, but unlike them we do not follow our compulsions heedlessly. Either we resist and wonder what could have been, or we relent and then regret it. Do the moths feel anything for their women? Do they shed tears when their lovers are torn apart from within by the seeds they planted? Perhaps that is why they sometimes stray too close to a flame.<br />
<br />
Now that I think about it, maybe that's what it was for Pine all along. He admired them not for their perceived misogyny, but for being able to do what he never could.<br />
<br />
To soar into the flame and be done with it.E. Clark Averyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255455096078501026noreply@blogger.com2