Magic Graveyards

Welcome to Saragun Springs Outro

(It seemed appropriate for me to end this collection of Saragun Springs Books with what song writers call an “outro.” In the next few months new stuff will be coming–again, fair warning–Leila)

Outro

I met the Boss at the spring at three AM. This happened “the other day”–the most useful time reference in all literature. You can say it ten years from now in either direction and it will still be its effectively vague bad self.

She was seated at the picnic table, and the stench bubble encapsulating the evil water glowed green in the Pinglight.

Three A.M. has its own truth; but it doesn’t translate well to daylight. Maybe it is the lingering last call in the voice, or steady hands that lose their firm dexterity after a night of uneasy sleep, which then flop like a docked Halibut until you mercifully push the Fish back into the 80 proof sea. In Saragun Springs we call that activity “Hook of the Halibut that docked you.”

“So, you finally finished a three week project in just under two years,” the Boss said.

“Art is infinite–it knows no time limit. The same can be said for unagented submissions sent to reputable publishers who actually pay for the work instead of soaking you for every nickel,” I said, as I sat on the other side of the table.

“How so?” Her voice had a Gordon’s edge to it, and “smelled” like a cross between tobacco and jumper berries. Since we have similar habits, I did not make mention of it.

“Well when you cast an unasked-for, non-touted opus into the structured world of, say, Knoff, you never see it again. It speeds on toward infinity.”

“Are you suggesting that the ‘pending’ notifications at Submittable aren’t as candid as they should be?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Hell, the apocalypse can honestly be categorized as pending–yet something tells me that we will hear about it long before we do Doubleday.”

She looked at me for a long time. “I guess it’s pretty hopeless.”

“Of course it is–everything worth a damn is hopeless. And you should let it get you down as long as you don’t stay down,” I said.

She thought about that, and I could tell that the fifty or sixty things wrong with my statement were running through her mind. She sighed. “I don’t want to end this book on a philosophical note–let’s lay down a story for the road and adjourn to the bar.”

“Now you’re getting the hang of hopelessness,” I said.

I knocked on the fourth wall, just the other day, and left a message you will be reading, about now.

“Hi reader, here’s a little something for the road. A little ode to the upside of being involved in a hopeless cause.”

Only a Jellyfish Would Live Forever

The Scenario: Part I

He crushed two pills between his teeth and swallowed. That made four in an hour. A stomach that wanted to stay alive would have objected; but for once there was consensus. He believed that two more similar doses within the next thirty minutes should punch his ticket to the Undiscovered Country. Perhaps such an important event as flirting with self destruction should come accompanied by an unfilched metaphor, but when in doubt go with Shakespeare–Besides he’d used up all the sparklers in his suicide note. It was a fine suicide note. Well written, streaked with effortless pathos and humor. It was the best thing he had ever written. “All show, no tell,” he’d said after lighting it on fire and watching it curl to black in the kitchen sink. “Best punched ticket ever.”

He repaired to the drawing room because ever since childhood he liked to think that better than “let’s go to the front room.” In happier times, when he had friends, he even said “Let’s repair to the drawing room,” often, too often. It was one of the small things that people disliked about him. He got it from the vividly colorful Hammer horror movies, which starred Cushing and Lee and ran endlessly on Saturday afternoons when he was a boy. Upon sitting down in the easy chair where someone would find him, he wondered for the first time in all those years if he had heard it wrong; maybe the actors had said something else other than repaired. Maybe he had got it wrong the same way that people who speak more than write put down “should of” instead of “should’ve” on the rare occasions in which they must write. For anyone else it might have been awfully late in the game for such a banal triviality–but as it had stated in his burned suicide note, “I’m not like other people.”

Although his head was getting fuzzy, he opened his phone and Googled “repaired.” He felt ignorant until he thought to Google “repair(ed) to the drawing room,” and found it proper. Then he Googled “Hazel Court”–a Kapow! “Eyes Up” British actress who appeared in Hammer’s version of Frankenstien, as well as some of Roger Corman’s Poe pictures. He wanted to see if Hazel Court was still alive. She wasn’t. He then immediately Googled “Barbara Steele,” another Kapow! “Eyes Up” sort of actress from the same era. She was alive. Although knowing that Barbara Steele was alive came as happy information, it didn’t gentle his grief for sudden loss of Hazel Court.

He opened Word and wrote: “Dear Someone: I refuse to live in a world without Hazel Court in it. Thus I have repaired to the Eternal Drawing Room. No offense to Barbara Steele.”

The trouble with attempting suicide via happy pills (which were the nature of the unnamed stubstance) is pausing too long during your deliberate overdose. This allows the pills time to show you the reason why people get addicted to them. He had come across such during his suicide research. He figured that Kurt Cobain used the shotgun soon after injecting enough heroin to drop a boy band because of the drug’s charming effect. He figured that Cobain had foreseen such and had taken the preventative Hemingway measure, just in case the smack coerced him into changing his mind and calling 911 to get help for the overwhelming amount of heroin in his system. Shotgun blasts to the head change your brain, but not your mind. Not with the organic computer needed to do that dripping–

“No! No! No!” He said, snapping off each “No!” like it was also a gunshot. He was in the habit of snapping off three No’s whenever his ever incessant mind took an image too far.

The First Intrusion

The preceding scenario has been freshly concocted by me, a Pen Name. The Pen Name appears at the top. The reason for this intrusion, and for the others to come will be made clear to you, by and by. Vanity tells me that the appearance of my name might be the reason why some of you are reading this. It could also be the reason why more of you aren’t reading this, which, of course, renders this sentence meaningless. If the latter is the case, I humbly beseech the ones who are reading this on the strength of my name to deliver a message to the others who avoid the piece for the same cause. Tell them I said “I know who you are and it’s high time you learn that I only scan your stuff and check the categories before I phony up a seemingly high-minded, positive comment on your behalf.” You see, the main reason why Pen Names exist at all is to catch the hell-fallout produced when the real person behind the veil exercises the fallacy called Free Speech.

Wait a second–veil gives me a big idea. Let’s return to our unnamed, insincerely suicidal hero and see what he can do with it.

The Scenario: Part II

He had researched how many happy pills it would take to kill a man his size. It was a mathematical, time dependent equation which had factored in the prevention of vomiting, and had a tipping point of no return. Whilst in the chair where someone would find him, he envisioned himself running blindly toward the end of a great cliff, then coming to a devil may care skidding stop, just standing there with his toes hanging over the crumbling edge, only one forward urge of weight standing between him and eternity. There are things further from the truth than what he had imagined; mainly, he was actually more like a man on his hands and knees creeping up to the safety rail at the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Still, the pain caused by his incessant mind was real enough. Since he was eleven he had been plagued with a horrible twisted perversion of something called “Cherophobia”–the fear of happiness. Whenever he got too happy or witty inside, a dark amorphous shape that he uncreatively but accurately named “Black,” would rise from his subconscious and negate the positive with a hellish image. Although there is nothing funny about Kurt Cobain’s suicide, his little touches of “enough heroin to drop a boy band,” and “Shotgun blasts change your brain, but not your mind” had helped. But the visualization of the ruined substance that had created Come as You Are “dripping” from the wall behind Cobain’s exploded head was the work of Black.

Usually, the conditions present in his Black attacks were much wider set apart than what appeared in the Cobain thing. Instead of getting nipped for whistling in the graveyard, a true Black attack would manifest itself when he’d be doing something like joyfully opening a birthday present and then suddenly remember the time he had entered the kitchen and saw Mom’s latest insane, grinning boyfriend holding a bread knife to her throat. And a great shame would encompass him, as though he had done something wrong. That’s an example of a major Black attack. All Black attacks great and small always ended with him biting off “No!” aloud three times if alone, and in his head if in public.

He had grown up surrounded by hellish images not of his own creation. His beautiful, mentally ill mother attracted abusive men. Although no major event such as murder had ever happened, the threat of such was always there. He was a caged rabbit housed between a wolf and a stoat enclosure. Funny thing was that none of it was really anyone’s fault, or so he had reasoned. But the worst part was how everything had a way of falling to normal afterwards. Not ten minutes after the bread knife episode the three of them were eating dinner as though it was just another day.

Over time he developed a defense called a “Tuesday Dream.” There is a metaphysical, non linear reason for the name. Yet nothing felt truer. He once theorized that Tuesday was the one day of the week in which things were at their most settled. Unlike most other children he feared the weekend, for that was when alcohol was added to the craziness. And in that sort of world, the weekend begins where Thursday gives over to Friday, and leaves too big a stain for Sunday to hold on its own, so it dribbles into Monday.

A typical Tuesday Dream required a brightly lit, bizarre yet sense-making vignette of his own creation to take shape in his mind. It had to be comedy, made by him, thinking up the Marx Brothers didn’t help much. You must slay your dragons with your own goddamn sword. No! You must hit the villain in the face with a pie you baked. He considered the last two items, and although the pie thing was truer, the dragon one sounded better.

He sat up in the easy chair and said, “Betcha’ ain’t heard this one. It’s a real side-splitter, an aisle roller. Imagine uptown New York on a sunny day in 1962. And imagine looking at it as though it were a movie. Then the camera catches the ogling reaction shots of men in the streets. Each guy catches a glimpse of something that turns him into a human boner–even though something that crass was only inferred back then.

“Anyway, you get a low back shot of the commotion in a skirt as she goes up the front stairs and enters an office building. She’s a Kapow! ‘Eyes up’ sort of girl, who does things to an arch business suit that are unholy. She really swings it. And how.

“You then see the Kapow! ‘Eyes up’ woman passing out more boners when she gets on an elevator inside the building. All the guys–including the elevator operator–a balding guy wearing an organ grinder’s monkey type of suit–gawk at her even though her face is hidden by a light colored veil that obscures her face. The few Plain Janes around glare at the woman with jealous contempt. The Kapow! Woman in the veil seems oblivious to all of them. But she knows. She knows. This role usually went to Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield when the producers didn’t have Monroe or Mansfield money. This time the mystery actress behind the veil is Miss Hazel Court.

“Anyway, there’s a cut to a shot inside a plastic surgeon’s office. The plastic surgeon is played to the hilt by Tony Randall. And you know that he’s a plastic surgeon because of the witty repartee exchanged between Tony and his nurse/receptionist who is either Eve Arden or Thelma Ritter.

“For plot reasons it is necessary to get it across that the plastic surgeon is bored with his family man life. Maybe he does this during a phone call while he’s seated at his desk. Then Eve or Thelma buzz the doctor and tell him that his appointment is here…

“No-wait! Tony buzzes the desk to ask if his appointment is there and the next shot is of Eve or Thelma wryly looking up at the veiled mystery woman. Eve or Thelma says ‘Yes. And how.’

“Tony gets an erudite boner when he sees her. There was nothing boring about the shape in front of him. After the perfunctory stuff is out of the way, Tony says, “How may I help you, um, (he consults her name written on something on his desk) Miss (he says hopefully) Aphrodite?

“Her cultured, flirtatious, yet oddly muffled English accent comes from behind the veil and informs Tony that it’s ‘Just Aphrodite.’ Before he can respond she speaks mystically into his soul. ‘I am the Goddess Aphrodite. Immortal and all powerful in love. Yet, alas, this mortal shape I occasionally must take currently requires the services of someone like you.’

“And as she unclasps the veil she says, ‘It’s been a thousand years since I last took this mortal form. And as you already must know, dear Doctor, the ears and nose never stop growing.’ The veil falls away.

“Jeezus! Get a load of the look on Randall’s rubber face when he gets a load of her and her thousand year nose and ears. She’s about as likely a boner passer-outer as a Mrs. Potato Head…”

Then he faltered. The animation in his voice and form dissipated. It was as though he had become unplugged. The imagined image of Hazel in prosthetics reminds him of Mrs. Doubtfire, which immediately dissolved into the thought of Robin Wiliams with a belt around his neck…

“No! No! No!”

Second Intrusion

The notion that people might be characters of writers’ invention is as old as thinking; I suspect that it came about the week philosophy was invented. Writers taking up the safety of the nom de plume is nearly as ancient. There’s nothing philosophical to be found in that. At one time there used to be physical penalties dealt out for the trap called Free Speech. A head in the basket here, ten years’ hard labor in the gulag there. Although getting dragged out into the cyber-public square for a virtual stoning proves that the soul of intolerant stupidity travels from age to age as immortally as the Plague, most nations now have laws against inserting heretics into the iron maiden. But maybe that would be more merciful than nailing a Bad German to a cross planted in the never-never wasteland called Social Media.

There isn’t an even distribution of pain and happiness in the Universe. There is an equal amount of those two qualities in the Universe, but it’s pain that is found everywhere whilst happiness tends to be found in globs which are separated by eons of spacetime. Most of those thoughts, too, are hardly original. Still, like the inclusion of slavery at the founding of the United States, the uneven distribution of equal amounts of pain in the Universe is probably a condition that could not be eased prior to the start of the Universe, lest there be risk of there being no Universe at all. A compromise, however, was hashed out between unknown factions. One side wanted an even distribution of both pain and happiness. The other said they preferred the concept of cause and effect. As it goes with political compromises, everybody shook hands and announced a Great Accord; which meant that one side gave up on its principles and returned home smiling and reassuring and waving a document as empty as that brought back to England by Neville Chamberlain, after he’d been sold a pot of magic sauerkraut by Adolph Hitler.

All the preceding gobbledygook results in as good a definition for the meaning of life as a human being deserves to get. Cause and Effect. Plain and simple. Life is like floating through a sea lightly, yet always poisoned with pain, and very few of us run into the widely interspersed islands of happiness. Such is the case of the “he” in our scenario. His life has been a horror show put on by Cause and Effect. But something, if not new, at least rare is going to happen to our anonymous, hapless hero. He is going to run smack into a glob of happiness. For I am the Pen Name who created him and his history and pains and his various strangenesses, and have endowed him with a will, if not exactly free, is, at least, had at a steep discount. Unlike the gods real people beseech for help, I am going to take responsibility for this guy I have created today.

I could just go in and change both his nature and nurture, but since he believes that he has accrued his scars honestly, it would be as unfair an action on my part as was my drawing him up out of boredom because I could not think of anything else to write about in the first place.

The only difference between a hallucination and reality is the ethical, if not moral, choice, if any, made by the god or Pen Name in charge of a particular person or persons. The preceding sentence is of the kind you have to read ten times for it to almost make sense once, for it is similar in flavor with this current sentence, which is about to end, without actually saying anything useful, right now. With all that left rattling about like ghosts summoned from the grave only to discover that their necromancer might be high on something, and that she has no idea why she had called them forth from their cozy holes, I exit and present a implausible/plausible happy ending for this nameless soul conjured by my indiscrete scribblings. Since I drew him up I feel responsible for his well being. Alas, I don’t want to deal with him much further, so here goes with the implausible/plausible happy ending. It’s an open ended happily forever after. All writers do such as means to get the reader’s imagination to do their work for them.

Scenario Happy Ending

Too many happy pills too soon tend to make their takers dozy. Many honestly suicidal people who consume them as a means of discovering the Undiscovered Country pass out before they have paid the sufficient fare. They usually awaken confused, many hours later, perhaps half-wondering why the Afterlife has the same stuff in it that they have at home…

Sincerity-Challenged Afterthought Intrusion. Or: A Pen’s Attempt to Cover Her Ass

Suicide is plain wrong. It is a preventable tragedy. Although it seems like people care more after the fact than they did before, and tend to lay dollar store votives and fake flowers in the typical barn-door-after-the-cows response inherent to the human race, trust me, doggone it, people care. Giving a fuck about the pain of others is what people do. So, don’t forget to wipe and stay off the pipe, take your vitamins, say your prayers, take everything you read literally and give obsequious props to whatever geographic-dependent god your ancestors told your family to believe in. It’s gonna be (: (: (: (: (:!!!

Happy Ending Continued….

Such happened to our hero, who finished four tablets shy of Nirvana. Whilst he had been studying Hazel Court’s image gallery, he fell into a sleep so profound that his building’s fire alarm didn’t stir him when it went off due to a neighbor’s misguided attempt at cajun-style blackened chicken. Although the First Responders put the fire out quickly enough, there was much smoke and confusion. The EMT’s went from door to door with a master key provided by the building’s super to check out unanswered knocks.

As he slowly came to with the aid of an oxygen mask, he saw a beautiful angel with red hair and green eyes in a Torqwamni County Fire Department uniform. She was holding the mask to his face. She shushed his first attempts at speaking. Her name tag said V. Aphrodite. And she gazed into his eyes, glanced at the vial then back at him, then said, ”Do you know that the nose and ears grow forever?”

THE END

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Five: The Caretaker’s Cottage Part Four

Behold the little god of half-assedness

Officially nameless, Charleston’s “Alone Park” was once part of neighboring New Town Cemetery. “Once” because In 1973 two-hundred square feet of graveyard property was accidentally left out when chainlink replaced New Town’s original fencing. Upon discovering the error, the city council refused to cough up another cent for link-fencing, but it didn’t want an inch of their property left unconquered, either.

The solution was inspired by the little god of half-assedness–the deity of governments, great and small. Ever since its founding in 1897, the Charleston city council has been keenly devoted to the little god of half-assedness. Council members come and go, but the gospel remains the same.

Since there were no graves in that part of the cemetery, someone hit on the idea of turning it into a small park; another someone remembered an old wood bench stored in the cemetery tool shed (how long and why it was there were mysteries); yet another someone removed a young Cherry Tree in the graveyard and planted it beside the bench because a final someone (the mayor’s nine-year-old daughter) complained that the space didn’t look “parky” enough. A trash receptacle was added for a final touch.

Little has changed at Alone Park since it “opened.” Save for the immediate theft of the trash receptacle (never replaced) and substantial growth of the Cherry, It remains two-hundred square feet of crabgrass surrounding the same bench, now extravagantly stained by decades of birdshit and graffiti. When people think about it at all, they mistake it for a bus stop. And it wouldn’t be much of a subject if it wasn’t enchanted.

Yes, Alone Park is magic. It got that way from being a part of the cemetery, which has always been magic because the land it is on has been magic since shortly after the formation of the Earth; yet somehow, the little god of half-assedness, though not magical, has a way of swaying the spells. Regardless, there are fewer magical places on Earth than there are instances of unconditional love performed by anyone who is not a parent, child, spouse or pet, but there are some.

In the religious sense, bad prayers are the bounced checks of the soul, forwarded to Hell for collection. But Alone Park is neither holy, nor human, nor artificial nor does it come with strings attached. You don’t have to believe in something even more unlikely than Alone Park itself for it to want to help you; but its magic is small, perhaps even slightly half-assed.

Caught in a Mirror Ball

An extraordinarily bitter yet bright woman named Wendy Gray had been mysteriously attracted to Alone Park on a raw November Saturday morning better suited for indoor ruminations of hate and anger. Intelligent, imaginative people, even those who have bad attitudes (such as Wendy), are much more susceptible to magic than dopes are. It has something to do with the basic dope’s smoothness of brain–’tis the crinkles from which we think. Regardless, a strange insistence entered Wendy’s dreams during the night and, unlike a dream, grew stronger upon waking. Impossible to shake off, Wendy experienced an overwhelming need to go to the little park across the road from her apartment and wait. And something else told her that bringing a newspaper along might be a good idea. The urge would not let go and grew into a command; Wendy eventually found herself dressing to go out after breakfast.

In a triumph for the little god of half-assedness, there’s a sign in front of the cemetery tool shed (the same one in which the bench was stored) that claims it is the original “Caretaker’s Cottage.” The building has never been anything other than a tool shed, but that’s what the sign says. Regardless, it is an enchanted tool shed (by association) that stands about a hundred yards uphill from Alone Park.

A moment after Wendy arrived at the park (the cleanliness of the bench made it clear what the newspaper was for), the Cottage door opened, and out stepped a tall young woman wearing a knit trapper cap, down vest, flannel shirt, carpenter jeans, and bright yellow “Wellies” that worked a “Duckies” motif.

The woman was Gwen Cooper, the volunteer Weekend Caretaker at New Town Cemetery. Whatever your personal criteria for a “perfect 10” is, in the female sense, please apply it to Gwen–but let’s try not to get pervy about it. By doing so you will eliminate the further abuse of tired adjectives that describe an overall state of healthy goodlookingness. Gwen was carrying a waterproof seat cushion, the type people take to ballgames.

And although it may be a touch beige to suggest that attitude is what sets beings with nearly identical molecular structures apart, some might suggest it goes a long way to explain the differences between Wendy Gray and Gwen Cooper. But that sort of thinking cheapens the experience. Regardless, other than gender, high intelligence and the name Gwendelyn, Wendy (roughly two and a half times Gwen’s age and a foot shorter) was hearing just one more “Hey, turn that frown upside down” away from committing a felony, while Gwen led a less perturbed existence.

“Hey-hey Wendy,” a smiling Gwen said upon arriving at Alone Park. She placed the cushion on the bench and sat next to Wendy.

Enchanted persons, even bright ones, are slightly out of step with time, and a bit slow to react. But Wendy’s wits gathered enough for her to regard Gwen with suspicion, “Do I know you?”

“Not yet, but I know someone who does, and for the longest time,” she said and took one of Wendy’s hands in her. A static charge passed between them, and Wendy’s mind vacated her body. Gwen let go of Wendy’s hand and softly thunked her between the eyes with her forefinger, like checking a melon. No reaction. Complete enchantment. She gently closed Wendy’s eyes because they creeped her out.

Gwen removed her phone from her jacket and selected a special app that would exist only while Wendy was “away.” The app was a spinning mirror ball, which appeared on schedule. After opening it, Gwen watched the mirror ball spin like a connection swirl.

1977th Heaven

Actual time travel is immoral. Consider this: if you go back to a certain moment in the past, not only have the persons and places you contact return as they were, the entire Universe takes a step back. It raises good things as well as all the pain and the shame and violence at the time. And since there are much more evil actions taking place in the world at every moment, Magical Beings, like the Eternal Earth Spirit (not to be confused with the little god) who has been far below the land that the cemetery was founded on since before the days of oceans and various Ice Ages and melt offs (and has been named Keeper by Gwen–who also thought up “Alone Park” and “the little god of half-assedness”), refuse to engage in the practice, although it is uncertain if any of them can actually do such.

But sending a mind back to a time known to that person, with utter clarity, and an absolute sense of thereness, for a few minutes, in a “time bubble” while the rest of the past is on pause is possible for that kind of entity. But there is only one major rule that cannot be altered–the traveler may never enter a time when she didn’t exist.

Gwen was slightly disappointed that she’d been born in 1994, thus could not accompany Wendy (who debuted at the end of 1953) to a little time bubble in the brave year of 1977. So she had to be content watching the scene on her phone.

The turning mirror ball on her screen resolved itself and Gwen saw her beloved, a Ghost named John Mallory, who died at thirty-two in 1978 due to a stupid accident. Technically speaking John was not yet dead in 1977, but he was traveling back to that year as a Ghost from the future, to a point when he was alive again, if only for a moment. John was seated on a bench at what appeared to be a booth in a diner. Nothing fancy, the kind in which plastic menus are already on the table and the ketchup bottle is always at half mast (with nasty vulcanized bits on the cap and the menus), and where it is best to make certain that no comedian has loosened the salt and sugar container lids before use. John knew Gwen was watching and he gave her the thumbs up.

Above the bench across from John, another mirror ball was turning, “connecting” the mind of Wendy Gray to 1977. The recreation of 1977 was entirely in the time bubble that Keeper had formed. Only a small piece of the paused greater when was visible as a shimmering veil of silver, bordering the scene.

Before leaving the Cottage–Gwen for Alone Park, and Mallory’s Ghost to 1977, Gwen had taken stock of the outfit John was clad in. White bell bottoms, orange Puma sneakers, a “tuxedo tee-shirt” and a set of rainbow suspenders similar to what Robin Williams sported in Mork and Mindy. Keeper always “dresses” otherwise wispy, ethereal John in clothing he had owned in life only.

“Nanu, nanu,” Gwen had whispered, with a dopey grin on her face. Although John died shortly before the series first aired, thus his suspender selection was coincidental, he got the gist of her comment anyway. Gwen always got that dopey grin on her face when she encountered what, in John’s mind, was high fashion.

“We slayed back then,” he said, pleased with himself, his hair –perfect–as that of Barry Gibb and/or the Werewolf seen drinking pina coladas at Trader Vic’s.

“You certainly knew how to slay the ozone,” she said. “Does the hair move when you turn your head naturally, or do ya gotta give it a shove?” Gwen added with a sarcastic twitch of her head.

The trip down the recent visit to Memory Lane ended when Wendy’s mind, and form, finally uploaded at her side of the table.

The concept of “disbelief” is usually inaccurately presented. Smart people who see a Creature From the Black Lagoon shambling toward them on the beach, with obvious bad intent, will disregard everything their parents taught them about there being no such thing as a Creature From the Black Lagoon and run. Smart people do not examine the impossible until they are safe. People who refuse to believe their eyes wind up as Creature From the Black Lagoon shit. It’s all part of the preternatural disorder of things.

And although roughly forty-five years were extracted from “Then” Wendy’s face, she was indeed the same person as the insensate being seated beside Gwen on the bench. Twenty-three-year-old Wendy was just as small and immaculate as she was in the present. The major difference was the 1977 version wore her long dark brown hair parted in the middle, and the modern day Wendy sported a close cropped, spiky silver style that went well with her face. And despite being sent back decades in but a moment (although sent back, Wendy retained her “future” memories), the instant she saw who was seated across from her in the booth she leapt onto the table and began pummeling John with a furious flurry of well flung fists.

Gwen began laughing out loud. She and John were of Team Alone Park, a project to make the world a slightly better place–and while discussing the “Wendy Project” with John earlier in the Cottage, Gwen predicted this sort of reaction due to what John had told her had transpired between him and Wendy in 1977. He had broken up with her–like a coward–by phone and not in person. He held the opinion that Wendy, though notoriously quick tempered, would be temporarily confused by her sudden transformation, which would give him a chance to explain.

“You fuckery-fucked-fucker!” or something similar accompanied each and every blow Wendy delivered to John’s arms as he protected his face.

“Don’t touch the hair! Watch the hair!” Gwen said to the phone, stomping her feet up and down, laughing like a child.

“Jesus Christ! Holdup for a second–hold–hold on will you!” John said.

Wendy eased off because she saw the ketchup bottle. John had a good idea what that might lead to and grabbed it in the nick of time.

“Aren’t you at all curious about what’s going on–it’s not a dream, you know?” he asked, somehow able to push Wendy back into her seat without enraging her further.

“Of course I know Prince of Assholes,” Wendy hissed. “The thing that Chicky-poo calls Keeper told me all about it on my way over from the future–that’s what took so long.”

(Meanwhile…at Alone Park:)

“‘Chicky poo’?” Gwen said, with a sharp tilt of her head, holding the phone close to her face.

(We now return to 1977:)

“Do you think Keeper sent you back just to attack me?” John said. He’d been dead a long time, but for the bubble he was as physical as he had been and discovered he did not miss being slapped and punched.

“Didn’t say shit–just made me believe and know–the kicking the shit out of you theory is what I’m sticking with unless you can convince me otherwise,” she said, sliding the sugar dispenser to her side of the table, but at least exhibiting a cooler attitude for the first time since her arrival. “But I swear to God if this is some sort of half-assed apology for dumping me–just to make yourself feel better, this,” Wendy added, with a nod at the dispenser, “will be in you–as quickly and uncomfortably as possible.”

John smiled weakly. “Technically speaking, I’ve yet to ‘dump you’ as you put it…”

“Great!” Wendy said sarcastically. “Consider your ass dumped. Forget crawling back. I’ll screw with a Pig first.” She eyed the sugar dispenser even more dangerously. “If you think that makes up for anything, your ass will be much sweeter, soon.”

“Did you hear that I died in ‘78?”

“I heard about that in ‘90 or so,” she said. “My reaction lay somewhere between bittersweet and doing the hokey pokey on your grave. Anyway, so what? You seem to be doing all right now–you and Chicky-poo back on the bench.”

(Meanwhile…back at Alone Park)

“You’re just one Chicky-poo away from walking around with a penis on your head,” Gwen said to the enchanted Wendy, extracting a Sharpie from her vest pocket.

(We return to 1977)

As it had been true when they were a couple from 1976 to late ‘77, John found Wendy’s attitude tiresome.

“All right, have it your way,” he said, quietly. He had been hoping to accomplish a little more than just the intent of the mission, but forgiveness was clearly impossible. “But before whatever your bad self has planned with that thing transpires, you should know that a lot of effort has been made on your part–including the blatant disregard of the most fundamental laws of the universe. You can go on hating me until the end of time, far as I care–but try to remember that there are some good things about existence that you overlook because it is easier to be a bitch–Sally.”

Those were two magic words that appeared at the end of John’s dialogue–”bitch” which can move mountains (and sugar dispensers), and the truly magic name that deleted bitch and sent a shock through Wendy’s system. When John spoke “Sally” a seed was planted in Wendy’s mind–an “anti-tumour,” that would slowly grow and eventually result in a small good thing; the intent of the mission concocted by the powerful mind of Keeper

At “Sally,” 1977 closed and Wendy awoke on the bench in a new timeline. She had no idea that her life had been altered–for she had no memory of Keeper, John or Gwen. In her mind she had been in a daydream that blew off when she looked down and saw Sally holding one of those waterproof cushions people take to ballgames. Someone had written “Chicky-poo?” in marker on it.

Sally is a Toy Poodle, very bright and much inclined to bring stuff she finds lying about to Wendy. For five years Sally was a Toy Poodle because she had died of parvovirus which could have been prevented with a booster shot at the Vet’s, which Wendy kept blowing off because making Sally get out of the car at the clinic was a drag. The seed sown in the return of 1977 had bloomed in time, forty-three years after it had been planted, forty years before Sally had been born. The second chance moved Wendy to take Sally to the vet in time. This caused two separate histories, but since Sally is a good girl whose reappearance in the Book of Life harmed no one, the old line in which she had died in 2021 withered and was replaced by the new.

And for a second, seeing the cushion gave Wendy a glimpse of something much greater than her power to imagine–not a visual glimpse, but something of the soul. And for a heartbeat, she thought about an old boyfriend, and for the first time ever, she remembered him with tenderness.

Epilogue

Gwen was half-way up the hill by the time Wendy returned to her body.

She entered the Cottage and selected another app on her phone that appeared only when she was alone with John at New Town–she always assumed that Keeper took this precaution to prevent her from *butt dialing Mr. Mallory while at her day job (*remember what I said about getting pervy).

Keeper had clothed him in bright blue cowboy boots, flared blue jeans whose belt featured an immense buckle, a quilted western shirt and a white Stetson; one mustache away from Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit.

The usual dopey grin appeared on Gwen’s face. “Urban cowpie,” she whispered.

“Say what you want,” John laughed, “but it looks like we have a happy ending courtesy of the Alone Park Team.”

“Don’t forget the little god of half-assedness.”

“And the little god of half assedness.”

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Five: The Caretaker’s Cottage Part Three

Part One

Small God Syndrome

Gwen Cooper, the volunteer Weekend Caretaker at New Town Cemetery, was raking leaves one fine autumnal Saturday morn’, singing a groovy song first heard on The Brady Bunch called Sunshine Day:

“I just can’t stay inside all day

I gotta get out, get me some of those rays

Everybody’s smilin’ (sunshine day!)

Everybody’s laughin’ (sunshine day!)”

I, the Godlike Narrator, placed Sunshine Day in Gwen’s mind because I’d finally “got” an initially puzzling remark she’d made earlier, during the first draft of this story–call it “rehearsal”– because she, like all my Fictional Characters (FC’s) has Free Will, and often shares observations during the drafting process.

This is what happened:

Godlike Narrator: “I’m unhappy. The opening is an unsustainable strangeness. And I cannot face another backstory. It’s a recipe for shame and embarrassment and tautology.”

Gwen Cooper: “I thought you were ‘Unsneezy.’”

At six-feet, Gwen is thirteen inches taller than your Godlike Narrator. You may call me anything but late for Happy Hour; but sometimes I get sensitive when the subject is verticality.

“Hello, Gwen,” I said, as she continued singing and raking, my “from up there” voice a gentle breeze passing through the boughs of an Enchanted Oak Tree in the cemetery. I was invisible and somehow everywhere at once, as most Godlike Narrators choose to be. “Glad to see you’re having a groovy, sunshiny day.”

“Omnipresent,” Gwen said. She ceased raking and singing and directed her comments at the from up there voice.

“Gesundheit.” I said, not caring for the lack of awe in her voice.

“The word is omnipresent. If you say ‘somehow everywhere at once’ you damage your claim as a Godlike Narrator because the readers will wonder ‘Hey, if she’s Godlike how come she doesn’t know the word?’ That proves you are not omniscient, which, for your information, means all knowing. For my money omniscient kicks the crap out of omnipresent–but omnipotent rules both. What I’d give to be omnipotent. Again for your information, that means I can make anything happen because I say so. It would be sweet. For me, that is–I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic if it described you. Which it obviously doesn’t or I wouldn’t need to tell you this stuff.”

“Ha! Being the Godlike Narrator allows me to roll how I want. How do you explain Sunshine Day stuck in your mind? If that ain’t omni-whatever I don’t know what is. I need not pluck down the stars.”

“No, someone has to hand them to you.”

The second short joke fell flat, even with the bit o’ Shakespeare added in, as predicted by Gwen during the earlier draft. It looked good in my mind, but, as you can plainly see, it was as “I Saw it Coming” as Godzilla to the residents of Tokyo when he stomped in from the sea. It was meant to infuriate your Godlike Narrator into smiting Gwen as a device to move the story along. But as you also can plainly see, Gwen and I were still rooted to our spots. Unless one of us thought quickly, a chorus of crickets would sing us home with Sunshine Day.

“First, get that dumbass song out of my mind then follow my lead,” Gwen said. “Do so and I will spill the backstory. Just describe me as I tell it and don’t butt in.”

“Ha! Just as I had it planned,” I said, but without conviction. I sighed and removed the song from her mind.

“And change the ‘key,’” she added. “It will sound better in the present tense.”

“Your wishes are my commands, sire,” I say.

“And maybe you could display a sunshinier disposition.”

“Don’t push it sister.”

“Anyway, dear Reader, here we are together at the same time. Gwen has something to tell you. Feel free to imagine her anyway you want, but I insist that she be on the fresh side thirty, tall and such a spectacular looking type of person that you cannot imagine her having an excretory system–like a damn Barbie doll.”

“Why are you suddenly speaking in italics–and what the hell does ‘fresh side’ mean?” Milady asks.

“Chalk it up to mysterious ways, Gwen… all deep and meaningful.”

Gwen wants to say something. Perhaps a little sarcasm. Maybe something about how I now eschew italics when I describe her. But, maybe, she is thinking that I know lots of even lamer songs I can place in her head than Sunshine Day if she forces me to repeat myself about my mysterious ways; so, she shakes it off and addresses you.

“Hello, Readers. My name is Gwen Cooper–”

“Jesus Christ Gwen, I’ve told them that at least five–””

“Silence! Godlike Narrator, can’t you see I’m talking?” Gwen says, all snotty-like, with a scowl directed in the direction of my invisible from up here voice. Now she’s looking back your way, friendly-like, as though you guys are juuust a little better than me.

“Anyway,” she continues, “ if you can remember back to the opening, I’m the volunteer Weekend Caretaker here at New Town Cemetery. And although it is my objective to enlighten, the next few things I’m going to tell you will probably create confusion because the Godlike Narrator has just pissed away nearly a thousand words that could have been used to establish a bit more than what there currently is.”

As I prepare to smite Gwen for her little blasphemies and character assassinations, she points at the small cube-like structure pictured in the heading of this piece and says:

“That there is called the ‘Caretaker’s Cottage’ even though it is obviously a tool shed and no more a Cottage than Sylvia Plath was the composer of Sunshine Day. But it is magic inside. Via the Enchanted Oak tree that the Godlike Narrator is hiding in, an Elemental Earth Spirit known Keeper passes Enchanted Electricity from the Oak through the little brass eagle atop the cottage and inside I can summon the Ghost of my co-star and love interest, John Mallory John and I walk our fantasyland and have adventures, like Kane in Kung Fu or Jules in Pulp Fiction.”

Gwen winks at you. “You know,” she says, “that is all the backstory you really need for now. But it still leaves me with the job of ending part one of this story so we can move on towards something more elevating. As you already know, the Godlike Narrator is preparing to smite me for some untoward comment I will soon make about her lack of ‘verticality.’ For that, the recent use of ‘elevating’ and other shit supposedly long forgotten–for though low built, she has a tall memory.”

The smart ass is now feigning a thoughtful gaze into the distance, arms crossed, but one hand frees to rub her chin in the time honored mime of cogitation. Now her eyes are wide and bright; as though an “idea” light bulb, like in a Daffy Duck cartoon, has appeared above her head.

“Psst, guys,” Gwen says. “The Godlike Narrator up in the sky isn’t really invisible. We can’t see her cos Smurfs are blue.”

Although that one was even lamer than the other short joke that fizzled, I returned (as you already may have noticed) to the “key” of the past tense and took great offense to the dopey remark because Gwen was right about one thing– the three thousand word budget was looking to take the big swirl, so we had to get moving. Clouds gathered, rain fell, wind blew; and a single bolt of lightning, just close enough to get Gwen’s attention, hit across the street from the cemetery. She dashed into the safety of the Caretaker’s Cottage.

-Part Two-

John Mallory suffered an essentially pointless death by accident in 1978; he was thirty-two and died never knowing true love. How sad. (Of course he was never abducted and anally probed by aliens either; but on that account he has never expressed his gratitude.)

Fortunately, Mallory was buried at New Town Cemetery between the Enchanted Oak occupied by the Earth Spirit called Keeper and the Caretaker’s Cottage. Keeper was able to bring back Mallory as a Ghost as long as specific actions were followed. And via a series of previous events that would blow the word limit to revisit, Keeper had arranged it so only Gwen Cooper could perform those specific actions and interact with Mallory (which, when you think about it, in no way eases a suspicion that she might be crazy).

Although the cottage is a tool shed not much larger than a walkin closet, when Gwen enters and closes the door the far wall withdraws and the space fills with a Victorian era parlor because she believes that such is an appropriate meeting place with a Ghost paramour. Upon being chased inside by the offended Godlike Narrator, the cottage transformed. To “access” Mallory, Gwen must “phone” 1978. She also opens a bluetooth speaker on a table for Mallory to “speak” through. As a shape, Mallory is ethereal but no more impressive than Casper or the Canterville Ghost. But as has been established in previous performances by the Ghost, he has eyes the color of city rain, which appeals to Miss Gwendylyn Cooper.

Although it is highly unnecessary, Gwen likes to sing “Heathcliff, it’s me, your Cathy,” from Kate Bush’s 1978 hit Wuthering Heights upon calling John. Apparently, she operates under the delusion that the fiftieth time is as charming as the first.

John Mallory is always charmed by this, and was again, for the fifty-first time. Of course, even though dead, he is still a guy and Gwen is, as also established, beautiful. This combination allows her to say the stupidest shit conceivable and have it regarded much higher than it would by an objective observer.

“Hi, Gwen,” John said, upon the culmination of the process.

Despite those city rain eyes of his, alive or dead John is one of those guys who probably should never be allowed to dress himself. Some otherwise intelligent people need to go from start to finish with Mom (or her proxy) laying out their clothes on the bed. Then again the popular wardrobe of the late 1970’s didn’t allow much for good taste. Hence, John’s Ghost “gathered to” clad in red high rise silk jogging shorts; knee high white socks with two stripes at the top; an orange pair of size thirteen Traxx and a sleeveless puke-colored polyester tee shirt that had some sort of hood attached in the back.

“Trick or treat,” Gwen said, which she always says when his outfit stuns her.

He smiled as he always smiles when she says that because he never gets the joke.

“Hark!” Gwen said, holding a hand to her ear, in the time honored “hark” gesture–”Doth I hear the tense of our reality slipping like fault lines.”

Naturally that unscripted remark was meant as a jab at the Godlike Narrator. Due to word count issues, I couldn’t/can’t act on it then, now or tomorrow. But soon. I will smite her again. I put it on my Retroactive To Do List.

“Winners aren’t funny,” John said.

Gwen was used to strange little announcements made by John. For they were the words of Keeper, that ineffable Earth Spirit who has the entire life histories of all the persons buried in New Town Cemetery contained in her mind. Thousands of years, which she explores via the ad of Gwen and John as though they are human Rossetta stones.

“I said, Winners aren’t–” John began to repeat himself, because Gwen had yet to reply as planned.

“I know, lover,” Gwen said, “but I was listening to the enhanced backstory.”

“Cut!” I yelled. The scene vanished and resolved itself to my office in my realm of make believe.

-Part Three-

There we were, Gwen, Mallory’s Ghost, Boots the Impaler and myself. The first three are Fictional Characters (FC’s) of my creation who act in stories that I try to write. Every FC has a Self and (as stated before and plenty) they all have Free Will, which, I, the Godlike Narrator stupidly endow them with upon creation. Free Will often leads to unpleasant side effects such as unionization–and the Union of Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters now demands that I offer roles in all my productions to my stable of extant FC’s before I may create new characters. Although Gwen and Mallory played themselves in this production–they have appeared as many different creatures in the past. The role of the Eternal Earth Spirit, however, was/is to be played by a FC Siamese Cat named Boots the Impaler. Boots (or BTI) is attracted to roles in which he holds great power. But when he isn’t on call he’s usually cataclysmically stoned on crack nip and sleeping on my desk. Which was precisely what he was doing when we zapped out of the Caretaker’s Cottage and immediately zotted into being in my office.

“‘Zotted’?”

“Yes, Gwen zotted,” I said. “It seems to me that it will be impossible to tell a story with you guys in it if you keep peeking at the narration as we go.”

“It’s a little hard not to, Leila,” Mallory said. “You are right there in the room with us, practically yelling to the readers through a big hole in the fourth wall.”

“Right?” Gwen said.

I sighed and consulted the word count. Only 776 left in the budget prior to the start of this sentence.

“All right, kids, let’s adlib a finish,” I said.

At this point BTI awoke and yawned. Like all Cats he had been listening to everything that had been going on while he slept and did not care much about anything other than what concerned BTI. So it was a rare thing that he actually made a useful suggestion.

BTI speaks with what is known as a “mid atlantic” accent–that was once used by the Hollywood stars in old movies because being American they felt inferior to British actors in matters of class and sophistication.

“Seems here that we should finish the same as we began,” BTI said.

“What–with Gwen raking leaves and singing Sunshine Day–c’mon Bootsy you can do better than that,” I said.

“Not literally, dullard Human–but in the theme of it. You got over sensitive about the ‘Unsneezy’ remark dear Gwen made in rehearsal, and you carried it into the tale, thus ending any chance the material had of going anywhere.”

“So?”

“The Godlike Narrator said shortly,” Gwen added.

“Yo ho, Judas.”

BTI sighed as though trying to communicate the simplest idea to a single cell organism. Then a light shone in his ice blue eyes. He jumped onto Gwen’s lap and whispered something in her ear. She smiled and the same light shone in her equally icy blue eyes. She shared the idea with Mallory’s Ghost whose eyes like city rain shone just as brightly.

Then all together they began to sing:

“Short people got no reason, short people got no reason to live…”

Although that blasphemous tune hails from 1977 and not ‘78for a sense of symmetry, I understood the idea behind it.

“You guys can consider yourself smited,” I said as I immediately zotted the three of them back to New Town Cemetery. But not before hearing Gwen say “Smited?”

I just sat there for a long while, so long that the past eventually caught up to and merged with the present, as it is right now.

“Well,” I say, “too many tense issues for a sunshine day.”

Welcome to Saragun Springs Book Five: The Caretaker’s Cottage Part One

The Haunting of Miss Gwen Cooper

4 A.M. New Town Cemetery, Charleston, Washington

******

Eternal Keeper reached into the sky and plucked threads of starshine. The sheared strands merged as a multi-colored lightning bolt which struck the only oak tree inside New Town Cemetery. Thunder failed to tattle on the bolt; no one saw it strike; nor were the plentiful, watchful, sensitive, nocturnal creatures in the graveyard aware of it; nor did it in the least disturb the slumbering daybreak birds, nor squirrels, nor even the insects that inhabit the lone graveyard oak. But something did happen within a set-aside dimension where Keeper and the spirit of the tree coexist. Come sunrise, the shape of a ghost, whom Keeper had woven from the threads of plucked starshine, rose from his grave and proceeded to the power and safety of the enchanted tree.

Continue reading →

Welcome to Saragun Springs: Book Five The Caretaker’s Cottage

Introduction

We conclude Volume One of Welcome to Saragun Springs this month, with Book Five, The Caretaker’s Cottage, which is our “Featured presentation.”

Unfortunately (in my point of view), terms such as “vignettes” and “episodic” tend to describe my longer productions. Although I do not pretend to be in her league, Dorothy Parker discovered she was not a novelist the hard way and drank a bottle of shoe polish to get out of writing one after the advance had been spent. Fortunately, Mrs. Parker was much better at attempted suicide than at the successful version–so she survived and went on as a short track writer.

So, this piece isn’t a “real” novel, but it is a book, thus I have no plans involving the ingestion of cleaning products, nor is there an advance (or “minus-vance”) for me to squander. Regardless, the book brings back Miss Gwen Cooper, the Leading Lady FC who first appeared in Book One and sporadically since.

And for those of you who noticed the first mention of “Volume One” in this post, consider yourself forewarned of something that will arrive on this site sometime in 2025.

Leila