Since August 2005, I've honored and successfully met a challenge I set for myself. I have posted new material here at Clarity every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week. Since the fall of 2008, I even ramped up the pressure on myself, requiring (almost) every post to be solidly creative. No more easy ones. No more throwaways.
I'm officially ending my regular posting schedule. The world has changed, and I've changed. Time for me to accept that.
I think that beyond the act of writing itself and storytelling, Clarity has been an experiment in communication. My posts represent my raw thoughts and emotions squeezed through a lens of fiction, poetry, and photography. I've been intrigued to see whether and how others do the same. Like many things in life, the amazing successes I've had in these efforts are matched only by the magnitude of their failures.
I plan to continue posting, just on a non-structured basis. (I even forced myself to wait to post this note until Tuesday so that I wouldn't be keeping to my schedule through the backdoor. Ha!) Honestly, I'm not sure that less frequency will make any difference to anyone. It might even boost the fun of new posts...who knows? Maybe I just need to fashion a nice tombstone for the whole thing and let it rest in peace. Not yet, though.
Thanks for the great run. It will always be a special time to me.
Now, it's my pleasure to introduce the next era. Only, I'm not sure what it is.
One of the techs running the Worm-erator turned to the other. That one opened his mouth, but no words immediately came out.
"Do it!" Marnix said. He chambered a fresh round and flexed the kinks out of his neck. The fucker was going down. The room wriggled a third time.
Same scene, just a little different. The Minister was turned the other way.
Okay. Clear shot.
Marnix advanced.
And stepped hard on a man's foot.
"Ouch!"
Marnix ignored him, but the man caught hold of his arm.
"Jesus! Why don't you--"
Marnix shoved the man hard. In an empty room, he would have sailed off of his feet and landed on the ground, but in the crowd, he just rebounded off other bodies and came back at Marnix.
The blow was too much to brace for. Marnix flailed and stumbled on the mass of legs. He got kneed in the face. A shoe crunched his fingers. The room was already quieting to focus on the commotion.
Marnix scrambled up, but got bumped now in the other direction.
He pitched forward, but wasn't going to fall this time.
Except, while he was bent, he felt a gun barrel make contact with the back of his head.
His brain formulated a thought. Oh shit. But the words never made it to his mouth.
Back at the Worm-erator, the techs and the machine crumpled and popped out of existence. Those same guys were now in hiding. The Minister had been attacked under bizarre circumstances the day before, but survived. The hotel where it happened was still swarming with police. The assassination was called off.
Marnix also hid. He heard the report that he had been killed in the incident with the Minister. If he were perverse, he would find a way to go visit his body. They would not attempt the assassination now, but his fate was be sealed. Two of him couldn't exist forever, and clearly he was already dead.
Men on death row do mundane things on their final day. And during those hours before the past caught up to him, Marnix did too.
Marnix checked his weapon and checked his concealed body armor one last time before entering the Worm-erator. That was an inside joke. This time machine was the first one to navigate the shady room from tight government control to the unsavory elements at the other end of the black market. Eventually, government scientists need money. They need money bad enough to risk life imprisonment. Or even secret execution. Marnix would admit that he was unsavory. Not quite as unsavory as his anarchist employers, though. The Worm-erator untangled a bunch of theoretical physics and opened nice, discrete wormholes into the not-so-distant past.
So, what good was the not-so distant past? The High Minister of Finance had given a press conference in this very hotel yesterday. Government security was impenetrable. But impenetrable from physical intrusions only. No one protected against temporal assault. They didn't know they had to. Not yet. The Minister would be speaking not more than ten feet away at that empty podium. Marnix would be in the kill radius without walking a single step.
The Worm-erator hummed.
Marnix stepped into position.
The two techs engaged the machine. Marnix kept his hand on the pistol, ready to be drawn.
The room wriggled, like heat over a baking road. Voices erupted. Commotion. Many faces, suits, and ties. The room was buzzing with shop talk a few minutes after the press conference ended.
Marnix. Right in position. Close and clear.
In one practiced motion, he reached for the gun and began extending his arm. Just two strides forward to achieve point blank range. The man's brains were about to have a very bad day.
Weapon out.
One step.
Two.
Marnix aimed just above the Minister's ear. However, just as he pulled the trigger, another man flashed into view from the left. The wrong head came between his aim and the Minister. The shot coincided with skull thumping into the end of the gun barrel.
Brain did fly. Oh yes. But the wrong victim.
The anonymous man fell. The Minister blinked in shock. Unhurt.
The room wriggled again, and Marnix stood with the techs in the empty room.
"Fuck!" Marnix yelled. "A reporter got in the way at the last second! Reload the system! Send me back thirty seconds earlier!"
when the hammer blow falls even solid steel ripples like water just tight and small and fast sound travels faster in solids its the proximity of atoms just like anxiety move faster through a crowd or static from fingertips just before the touch the hammer blow falls distance matters closeness matters the hammer would even miss if you were farther away
at the age of six he chose to drown himself he swam too far to save that's when he discovered he could breathe water those that knew him would say lakes were the best for a murky nap but ponds were best for play fish swam too fast to catch turtles too easy frogs he could snatch all day when the water dried up he wasted not one tear he moved to the ocean to stay
i walked on the other side
to see mirror grass
i stopped to blow ripples
through the mercury leaves
the silvery ground
reflected titanium sky
and the molecules slid
when I tried to turn
the glass won't let me back away
Lay me down
Let the only sound
Be the overflow
--Florence and the Machine, What the Water Gave Me
"So. What do we have?"
"You're not going to believe it."
"I'm so tired, I think I'd believe you if you said Darth Vader was dancing with Pee Wee Herman in that house. I hate these calls in the middle of the night."
"Sorry Captain."
"Anyway, don't mind me. What's the situation?"
"The officer was responding to a 911, suspected burglar. The neighbor saw someone prowling in the yard."
"Right."
"But the neighbor described something pretty damn weird."
"Don't they all?"
"The officer didn't find any obvious signs of entry. Windows closed. No doors forced."
"Yep. [Yawn.]"
"So he rang the doorbell."
"Uh huh."
"Nobody came to the door."
"Can we jump ahead to the part where we called in nine patrol cars and half of the entire county here in the middle of the night?"
"The officer was going to go, call an all clear, but he smelled something."
"Shit. Are you telling me we've got one of those three-year-old decayed bodies in there? Or four hundred starving cats eating each other? I don't want to end up on the internet."
"No. But you're close."
"Close how?"
"Shit. He smelled shit."
"Oh. Now I feel better."
"The officer took his light and checked through the windows. Nothing out of the ordinary until he saw something dark and hunched over scurry into a doorway. The door to the basement. The thing moved pretty strange. Kind of on all fours."
"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm about to wish that I was back in bed?"
"So he forced the door. That's when he heard a ruckus in the basement. Some stuff falling. Something breaking. He called for backup before going down."
"So what do we have?"
"It's unbelievable. It's wrecked down there. Stuff is torn up and piled all over. In the back, there's sort of a makeshift cave."
"What?"
"I know. And there's more. It's like someone's been living down there like an animal. There was one pile of rotting food, and in the other corner, a pile of excrement. That was the smell."
"Who's down there?"
"The guy won't come out, but they can see his eyes back in the hole. They've tried to talk to him, but the only thing they get is this really bizarre hissing."
"You're fucking kidding me."
"No. So we checked on the owner. It's a guy. He's even a professional. There are a bunch of messages on the answering machine that must be from his job. They sound worried about him. Like he was stressed out. Then, he must have disappeared. They were looking for him. And when we were playing the messages, he must have heard it from the basement. He threw something big against the door."
"[Scowling.]"
"We also found scratch marks in the mud around the yard. He seems to have been coming out at night. It's garbage pickup tomorrow. He may have been going for that."
"Jesus."
"We were thinking of calling in an extraction team from the state penitentiary. They deal with this kind of shit."
"The guy totally snapped?"
"Yeah, looks that way. And you should hear him growling and hissing. It kind of makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It doesn't sound human. Do you want to stand at the top of the stairs? You can hear it for yourself."
"No. No, I don't."
"The weirdest part is, when I heard it, it kind of sounded familiar. I think if things got bad enough, I could sound like that."
Amanda yearns for a dark presence haunting the pond behind her house (4000 words). Smashwords ebook $0.99.
Jason in Print
Check out the exciting new Halloween anthology edited by Anne Frasier. In my piece, "She Came on the October Wind," a stray black cat appears nightly at Natalie's window and brings memories of a sister who ran away years earlier. Available for pre-order. August 2011.
