A Maze

     A college student discovered a maze between this world and the next, hidden behind a bookshelf that should never have been moved. She stumbles upon a dragon like creature, it befriends her, keeping her warm and safe until she is found. The Dragon has no use of it's hind legs, sacrificed in an attempt to save it's father, a dark god from a death that proved inevitable. Time is distorted in the maze and hours on the outside pass as days inside. The girl and Dragon, starved for companionship, become odd lovers. They are content until the outside world finds them. The girl is 'rescued', the Dragon is caged.
     A goddess, angry at the death of her mate, has riddled the world with disease. Humanity has no way to combat the unfamiliar plague and so is helpless as people die by the thousands. Until they discover the girl behind the bookcase, and the dragon. The girl has gained special powers and special insights from her time in the maze. 
     The girl offers the government any help they want, but begs for the dragon to be let go. She knows its mother will be angry and nothing good can come of keeping it in a cage. It's mother, the goddess will find it anywhere. There is no hiding. Expecting confrontation and resistance the goddess is not prepared for the girls actions when she eventually finds the underground research facility where the military has been holding her child. 
     The girl, who has been elevated to demigoddess status by her time in the maze, does the unthinkable to both sides and releases the Dragon without hesitation. She knows what no one else does yet, that it is dying. She offers it, its last few moments with its mother. The Dragon calls for her as well and as it fades from our existence it is under the hands of the two women it loves.
     Then the battle begins.

A Cup Half Filled

     A stranger comes across a village in his travels. They are a poor people and yet he has seen samples of their exquisite pottery scattered in rich houses throughout his wanderings.In return for food and shelter the traveler teaches the inhabitant of  the village to harness their Qi in the brightly coloured pots they are renowned for. 
     They train in secret. In the backs of drafty workshops, in stolen moments, in small groups or alone in the dead of night. Minds stilled, fluid motions gather the power in like liquid to fill their bowls where it burns like fire once captured, momentarily held, but never truly contained. The stranger teaches them to use the power as a weapon. Tea cups fill with sorrow and loss, bowls fill with anger. The stranger teaches them to make bombs from the substance of their souls. With such knowledge comes the power to rise up in resistance to the offhanded cruelty they have always endured as a people. The stranger discovers in himself the wisdom to avoid the violence he would have once advocated.
     Happy children in a thriving village fill small bowls with the bright rainbows of soul colour, and then make them sing.

Oddities & Bits

     Secreted deep underground there is chamber made of chocolate. A Council is in session, they are the ancient guardians of a priceless artifact. A chest, an alien artifact that may hold the wisdom of the ages. But the chest can only be opened by one of three foretold 'Chosen Ones'. A Robot, a human, and a chocolate elf.

     A woman stops into a pet shop to admire the beautiful Violet Valentines Bunnies. She likes them better than the Velveteen Rabbits, thinking their ears softer. On her way out the door she is distracted by the 'baby doll' that is way too realistic for it's own good... or anyone elses.

     Fixing the break in a phone line lets in voices from another dimension... most just want to talk. Some talk dirty, some don't have much to say for as much noise as they make. But it's the quiet ones, the open lines that you need to be worried about. That's when you've let in the ones who want to do more than talk. that's when you should shut off the TV. They're the ones who want you to see.

A Wind Around the World

     On the other side of the world the last butterfly flaps its wings for the final time.
     At first it is just a breeze, a wind a little harsher than normal. Perhaps unseasonal, but certainly not unprecedented. No one thinks twice as they go about their days, umbrellas guarded from turning inside out, collars pulled high.
     It becomes a storm without precipitation, or at least it is not water in any form that falls from the sky. Leaves pulled before their time, twigs and pebbles become missiles hurled like words of warning that still no one heeds.
      No one hears the voice of the wind until it rises from a whisper to a roar, but by then it is far to late. When the first deaths come they are of people no one notices, no sees the absence or recognizes the significance. They were bodies without homes or shelter, but it is not long before boarded windows and high walls do little to protect those who have them. It becomes impossible to fly for both man and bird. Then too dangerous to walk the streets unshielded. Wheeled transportation sufficed for a moment until it too was no match for the wind now sweeping down streets like water raging in a riverbed. Skyscrapers bent and broke, wooden houses shattered into arrows piercing those unfortunate enough to be caught above ground. Oceans rose as ice caps melted and seas were stirred into a boiling frenzy. Deserts spread as sand danced across terra firma, nothing able to stay rooted before the onslaught.
     Humanity fled, burrowing deep, hiding in bunkers, fallout shelters and caves. And still the wind found them, scoured them out, till there were only a few, and then there were none.

     In the end it was a feeling more than a sound. Pressure that built in the ears, a rumbling that moved from the soles of the feet up the spine to stutter the heart in its cage of ribs. When the walls came down, they reached , one to another, strangers, friends, lovers, to hold outstretched hands. Brick and mortar fell to reveal a tidal wave of sand to wash away the world, wiping the planet clean.

Music For the Masses

    Do you ever wake with music in your head? The lyrics in a language from before speech, universal; heard as much as spoken. This is the origin of Soul, of the Blues. It is Alternative, World Music in it's purest form. When you wake and the last vivid chords slip between sleep's clutching fingers it is not forgotten, simply passed on to the next listening sleeper.

      There is a rock concert in the Music of the Spheres. It was recorded on a CD that skips. The coolest of the gods plays guitar, the meanest plays drums. They are backed by choirs of angels and remixed by a DJ from hell. Sometimes, it can be heard even waking, sliding into the silence where nothing else abides. Divine and damning, created for the saint and the mad man equally, it binds us. All you have to do is listen.

Scatter-shots and Oddities

     The reclusive Zoozelsox rarely emerges from it's cave like home, and only in the hours of the night when nothing else is stirring. It always wares a scarf, claiming the colours keep unexpected things from happening. The Zoozelsox does not leave tracks.

***

     A women without children adopts an odd collection of discarded stuffed animals. They are repaired and tended, filled with new stuffing and love. In a fit of jealous anger her partner bundles them all into the closet. They do not like the dark.

The Secret's Keeper

     A woman has a secret, but it is not, as the people illegally searching her apartment imagine, hidden in the army of shoe boxes filed in rank under her bed. It may not even be a secret she is aware of knowing, as secrets are her business, and she keeps them like breathing. Interested parties find it difficult to determine just how much she really knows, and she uses their confusion to her advantage, pitting one against the other until there are only two left. But of course they are the most dangerous. The ones who will not simply stop at asking questions, but who will take the answers.

    I am inserted into her life like a deadly shadow. Dogging her steps and anticipating the movements of her enemies. My soul purpose is to guard the secret no one is certain she even holds. It is a balancing act on a very real edge.The next fatal visitor who comes calling finds me at the door in her place. The sharp blade he wields leaving his hand for mine as I disarm him fast enough it's as if it were by magic. A very confused assassin finds himself invited in for tea and cookies, and a chat. I pay little attention to the words they toss back and forth, instead I focus on the visual cues, watching for a sign that will require my reaction. 

     The woman has come to realize that the only way she can be safe is to share the knowledge she holds. Or convince the parties involved she actually knows nothing. As I sit watching she is in earnest negotiations to do just that. She wants this whole inconvenient incident to be over and done with as soon as possible. When assassins stop knocking at her door she can be rid of me and back to her normal routine. I cannot entirely blame her. I too wish to take my leave. There are too many secrets in this place... too many shoes.

Small Defiance

     It starts as just a spot of seeming mold on the old broken deck chair shoved in the corner of the garage. Were it something so simple, there would be no cause for alarm, but no one bothered to look closely. No one had any idea what lay in the small green blemish until it was too late, far too late.

     It continues as a patch of rust on a bike that hasn't moved in years. Long outgrown and abandoned it leans against the deck chair as if for support in its old age. The scab of sand coloured dryness eats in, spreads out, hungry and impatient. No one notices as it devours the bike they've forgotten. They'll wish they had remembered.

     It ends in the seemingly harmless puddle of water. It collects on an old warped window sash at the back of the little used garage. Within easy dripping distance of the chair and the bike, and it is this last simple thing, a drop of water, that gives rise to the end of the world as we know it.
     The mold is nothing so simple, but is actually a viscous, teaming rainforest in miniature. The rust is a desert so parched, so deadly that it renders even metal into dust. The puddle of water is the ocean, the rain, the flood. And here in this forgotten space where no one notices them, they cease being quite so small. The trees grow, the sand blows, and the water flows. First the garage is lost. By the time anyone notices, the house is gone. Before anyone takes action the block has been devoured. Before they find an effective weapon the state is gone. Before humanity can manage to unite against these most unnatural of natures invaders, the planet is lost. Or perhaps it has finally been won.

Cold Case

     A young police officer discovers evidence to a hundred year old cold case in a small village. When he says something he is ignored, ridiculed, shunned and outright mocked. Finally he finds two people he thinks may actually help him, sons of the sons of the original investigators.

     It is dark and cold in the small space where he wakes. Body propped upright, the young officer probes the dank brick of his standing tomb. He experiences a claustrophobia he wasn't aware he suffered from, nails braking against stone as he struggles. So tight is the space he cannot raise his arms high enough to remove the gag covering his mouth, muffling his screams. Water pours in over his vulnerable bare feet, rising higher with each panicked breath. Over the rush he can hear the voices, recognizes them as the men he trusted.

     "It's a shame really, if only he'd left well enough alone."

     "Some things are just meant to stay buried is all."

     Cold water swirls around his knees, his fingertips turned blue. Then his waist, his chest, his chin are engulfed by the inevitable tide. This is the way the first victim  died. The officer wonders if in a hundred years someone will search for him. As the water kisses his gagged lips, he thinks it more likely he will remained buried.

Fur Ball

     It is just dusk and I make a run to the local old world market for mice... to feed to my couch as a treat. I am the proud 'owner' of two kitty couches. They purr when happy, and knead my back to show their affection. When they are displeased it is best to find another place to sit. They like their rodent treats still breathing, shoved down between the cushions like so many other things lost.
     I live is a formal gated community. A high-rise dedicated to fuzzy furniture. Kitty Couches, Bird Beds, Fish Baths. Inside these walls man's best friend is far smarter than the average bear, but they are still just dogs. Apartments are rated for size and type of 'animal' occupant, the rules strictly enforced. Our doors have key pads and retinal scans. Our walls have ivy inside and out. We are green, and we are fuzzy.

1000 Cuts

     I am a near willing accomplice in the plotting of my own death. Make no mistake, I do not want to die, but of the options offered, life is not one. I have seen the deaths of those who came before me, shown like movies as I watch in a drug induced fugue. Tortured, broken down into the smallest bits of their human nature by people who wield weapons  like surgeons, every last one died begging for the end.

     I instead, negotiated for the terms of what was left of my life. Stripped bare, friendless in a room full of too bright light and the smell of antiseptic laced with terror, I knew that death was inevitable. And almost, I welcomed it. 

     Could it be quick? No, I must suffer to fulfill the needs of their unnamed gods. But I could choose. I thought of all the dream like horrors I had seen as I am bound to their altar, the uncomfortable hospital bed of science. They could and would harm or humiliate, belittle or literally cut me into pieces as I lived and died under curious hands. I chose the blade.

     The cold metal rested against the inside of my arm, a tease of sensation, the glint of silver seen from the corner of my eye. And then in the hand of an expert the blade was drawn across flesh. So sharp that at first there was no pain, no sensation at all. Until the blood welled to the surface as my next breath pulled the edges of the wound away from each other. Pain registers, a burn that I have no time to adjust to before the sharpness bites again. I begin to count.

The Voices of Silence

     What does the inside of a sleeping mind sound like? Are colours brighter, are scent and taste obsolete, touch relegated to that of a phantom? Or is everything more real, surreal, as in a dream?

     I pose these questions to you, here in this beginning, before I offer you my own answers in the snippets of dreams and other life rememberings I envision when my eyes are closed and my brain no longer works on the puzzles of this world. I see the wondrous and impossible behind the curtains of my eyelids, as well as the hideous and the horrible. So I warn you, be cautious in reading, mindful that by trapping these dreams with cages of words I am giving them shape, meaning, power. And hopefully, for some, there will be freedom.

-X