I'd reached the lightning-struck tower on my last visit to this ethereal domain, only to find that there was no means of entry. No window or door was present. I'd puzzled over this for many long hours when a solution finally came to me. And I must admit that I didn't arrive at the answer by any logical means, I simply divined it.
At a towering obelisk made of basalt and covered with indecipherable hieroglyphs, many leagues beyond the nameless city, I veered off to the northwest. Within the hour I came to an ancient peak laid low by the relentless march of time. Even though I'd never been there before, I went unerringly to a black orifice located on its lee side. An icy wind poured out of the murky darkness, sighing uncannily.
I entered the stygian cave and followed a series of twisting tunnels to a sacred temple located deep in the heart of the mountain. The place was decorated with evocative and daringly fantastic sculptures carved from alabaster. Upon an altar of pink marble was a relic that was similar in form to an Egyptian ankh.
The artifact was attended by a strange creature best described as a chimera of a lion and a man, not unlike the centaur of Greek mythology. But this was no mere beast. The stamp of intelligence was clearly upon his wide-set eyes.
He did not wish for me to take the sacred heirloom, but my need was greater than his. Without it, I could not gain access to the lightning-struck tower to rescue my darling Josephine.
I used the divine powers of my mind to render him motionless. When I removed the talisman from the marble altar the temple was immediately filled with a worrisome moaning, as of a distant throng of condemned spirits. The volume quickly swelled, so much so that my ears felt as if they were being torn asunder.
I took leave of the temple with due haste, but I was soon confronted by shadowy wraiths who were determined to keep me from absconding with their hallowed relic.
I fled through the tunnels with the phantoms in pursuit. The chase went on for many hours until I finally lost them near a vast underground lake lit by a strange phosphorescent mineral in the stalactites and stalagmites that populated the prodigious cavern.
By the time I finally emerged from that subterranean world the day had passed into twilight. Before long, the sky was filled with strange constellations that gave me pause when I first visited this realm but were now as familiar as those that had been my lifelong companions. Once again I took flight and headed onward towards my ultimate destination: the lightning-struck tower.
Ignis Fatuus
Part 3 - The Lightning-Struck Tower
I landed in the fields beyond the tower where strange, twisted trees reminiscent of weeping willows swayed in the light breeze. The trip had severely taxed my strength, and I was forced to rest until morning.
I arose with the new dawn, refreshed and anxious to complete my quest. From my vantage point, I could see the lightning-struck tower atop a small hill, less than a league away. It was just as I remembered it: a tall column constructed from white stones with no windows or doors. But now I could enter the charred structure using the power of the sacred artifact.
A movement atop the spire caught my eye. Someone or something was up there. I was tempted to go have a look but, as they say, discretion is the better part of valor.
Shortly thereafter, a dozen beasts leapt from the top of the tower. They were humanoid in design with flaps of skin that stretched from their arms to their legs, giving them the ability to glide effortlessly. When they were gone, I vaulted up to see if I could find their means of egress but none was readily apparent. Whatever their method of accessing the interior of the tower, mine would have to be different.
I returned to the ground and took a cautious look around before moving forward with my plan. I held the talisman close to the wall and watched in amazement as it began to give off an eerie, spectral light that created an opening in the white rocks. I hesitated for a moment before I stepped through.
Once inside, I heard a strange sort of music if indeed you could call it such. The sounds, whatever their origin and purpose, were as inexplicable as they were poignant.
Thus began the final leg of my journey to reunite with my lovely Josephine. Having no clue to her exact whereabouts, I began an exhaustive search.
The lightning-struck tower was teeming with peculiar and incomprehensible scenes. Many extraordinary creatures resided in the seemingly endless rooms. None were really like their Earth counterparts, so when I describe them as snakes or foxes or birds keep in mind that I use those terms for want of a better vocabulary.
The rooms that were devoid of life were filled with strange and exotic objects. Some I interpreted as works of art, though if truth be told, I had no clue as to their exact nature. But there was no arguing that the sublime frescoes that decorated the hallways were intended as such.
As I penetrated farther into the tower's interior, my senses were assaulted with sights and sounds that were increasingly ominous and bizarre.
Everywhere I turned I was beset by a thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination. One room, above all others, will forever be burned into my psyche. It was populated by diabolical fiends whose construction violated all known principles of biology. They were performing obscene rites of a terrible and revolting nature that filled me with disgust.
I fled from the appalling scene, traversing hallways and stairs that increasingly defied the rules of Euclidean geometry.
I lost all track of time and space. How long I wandered the mysterious spire I could not say. At last, I came to a brass door, over whose arch the skull of some abomination grinned horrifically, and I knew I'd reached my final destination.
I pushed the door open and entered a room that was vast beyond comprehension. Everywhere I looked, as far as the eye could see, were damnable beings that could only be imagined in the opium-sodden dreams of insane poets.
On a black granite throne sat the king of this supernatural realm. His many eyes reminded me of a clump of frog's eggs I found once when I was a boy, while his tentacles conjured forth images of the legendary Kraken of Norse tales. The loathsome beast was attired in purple robes and a crown of some unknown shining metal akin to gold while around him hung a curious nimbus of the most ethereal light.
He filled me with fear and awe, this terrible sovereign of the abyss. But I had come too far, suffered too much to turn back now.
"Where is my Josephine?" I demanded in a voice that reminded me of the solemnity of a Gregorian chant.
As he glanced in my direction, I could feel him inside my brain and I felt irrevocably violated. When he spoke the words were so caustic that my flesh began to melt.
"This is not your afterworld, Sebastian Yates. This is another plane of existence and here I am a god."
"Where is my Josephine?" I demanded again as I battled to maintain my corporeal form and my sanity.
"Fool! Did you not hear what I said? She is not here! Eons ago I led a strange and roving existence amongst the many dimensions of what you call reality. The eddies and currents of time and space carried me to places of which I will not speak. Then, like you, I found this place. And now that you've shown me the door to the world that you call home, I will subjugate your kind."
"No!" I screamed, though how I did so without a mouth I cannot tell.
"Do the appalling truths of the cosmos fill you with dread? Fear not, insignificant worm. I am not without mercy so I will grant you sweet oblivion."
As those final words escaped his lips a bolt of lightning shot from his crown and pierced my heart.
*****
I sighed as I looked at Sebastian's body, wired to that appalling electrical contraption.
Ezra cleared his throat before he spoke. "Percival Beckett, I assure you that your erstwhile classmate is in the afterworld. Soon he will return with his lost love."
We'd been sitting there for hours. Quite frankly I'd had enough of his hogwash and I said so, peppering my comments with all sorts of colorful expletives.
In response, the wizened old man offered
a lame explanation that I found rather wanting. Some rubbish about the astral plane and, of course, his dictum about the malleability of the human mind.
"I know you're a cynic. I know you want to debunk my theories," Ezra said. "But it can't be done because I speak the truth."
"Are you familiar with the Latin phrase ignis fatuus?" I asked. "That's what this is. A delusion."
No sooner were those words out of my mouth than my good friend, Sebastian Yates, went into some sort of horrific seizure. I tried to disconnect him from that wretched machine, but the heat was too intense. All I could do was watch helplessly as his flesh began to melt away.
The End
11 - Checklist
Archibald J. Wheeler was a quiet man, an efficient man, a man who liked to get things done. A slave to routine, he habitually kept checklists to ensure he wasn't falling behind on any of his responsibilities.
Saturday night, like every other night, he made a to-do list and taped it to his mirror where he would see it the following morning. It read:
1 - mail letters
2 - clean bathroom
3 - wash towels
4 - call Mom
Sunday he got up, ate breakfast, and took a quick shower. He then turned his attention to his checklist, marking off each item until he was finished.
Monday arrived and it was back to the grind. He had a tedious job as a patent clerk, but he dreamed of being a novelist.
"Archibald J. Wheeler, writer. I love the sound of that! Or Archibald J. Wheeler, poet."
A childhood love of reading had fueled his imagination and he spent most of his waking hours daydreaming about faraway places, daring adventures, and scantily-clad women.
By day, he would plot out his stories and by night, he would pound away at his keyboard, immersed in flights of fancy to escape his mundane existence.
There was, however, one small problem. Archibald J. Wheeler was a man who was easily distracted. Even the simplest of sounds would break his concentration. Unfortunately, this quiet man lived on a loud, bustling street.
Many things disrupted his thoughts and musings: the unnecessarily loud fire siren, the vast population of birds that lived in the shrubs near his house, and the yapping dogs that belonged to the woman down the street. But one distraction stood out above all the rest - his drunk, unemployed neighbor.
The fat slob would sit on his porch, chain-smoking cigarettes, guzzling down cheap beer, and loudly conversing with everybody who walked by, whether he knew them or not. He had other annoying habits as well. He kept his Christmas lights on his house year round and never cleaned up the garbage in his yard.
Archibald J. Wheeler knew he could be a successful writer, a star in fact, if he had the peace and quiet to focus and get the thrilling stories that existed in his mind down on paper.
After he completed his first novel, an Egyptian adventure, he put it up for sale expecting to soon be famous. But that didn't happen. Sure, he sold a few copies here and there, but he didn't strike it rich.
As he reflected on his lack of success, he came to a simple conclusion. It was his neighbor's fault the first novel didn't sell.
"He distracted me, kept me from writing my best."
And so he began his second story - a fantasy novel complete with wizards and dragons. But he ran into problems immediately. The fire siren seemed to go off every hour, the birds chirped incessantly, and the dogs down the street barked non-stop.
But those were only minor distractions. The real problem was his neighbor. It seemed like every time he got on a roll and the story started to flow his neighbor began to bother him and he lost his train of thought.
He took to peeking out the window at the lazy bum, watching him smoke pack after pack of cigarettes and swill down can after can of beer.
"Aren't those things expensive? How is he paying for them when he doesn't have a job? My taxes better not be supporting him! You'd think he'd have time to take down those Christmas lights since he just sits on his porch all day."
Despite the numerous disturbances, Archibald J. Wheeler plowed through and completed his second novel. Again, his hopes soared. This was the novel that would make him rich and famous! He knew it in his heart.
The sales numbers were solid the first week, but they gradually dwindled and eventually tanked altogether.
Archibald J. Wheeler grumbled. He brooded. He battled with melancholy and depression. As he reflected, he came to one inevitable conclusion. It was his neighbor's fault again!
"He distracted me, kept me from writing my best. I won't let it happen a third time."
Before he settled down to sleep that Friday night, he made up a checklist and put it on his mirror. It read:
1 - wash car
2 - take out garbage
3 - kill next door neighbor
4 - pick up milk
*****
The next day he got up, went through his morning routine, and went to work on his to-do list, marking off each item until he was done.
By mid-morning he was ready to begin his third book. With his neighbor finally out of the picture, he was convinced this one would be a masterpiece. He decided to try something different, so he began a series of short stories. Without his neighbor to distract him, he fell into a deep concentration and his writing flowed like never before.
He completed ten stories over the next few days. He decided he needed a way to weave the tales together, but as he began to write the outer story, a new disruption emerged. His neighbor across the street began to be annoying. But Archibald J. Wheeler soldiered on, completing his third book.
He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that fame and fortune were just around the corner.
But the breakthrough never materialized as sales numbers remained in single digits.
As he reflected on yet another failure, he came to an undeniable conclusion. The neighbor across the street. It was his fault!
"He distracted me, kept me from writing my best. He has to go, too."
Archibald J. Wheeler continued to grouse and gripe as he picked up a slip of paper and began making a new checklist. It read:
1 - stop at dry cleaners
2 - get hair cut
3 - kill neighbor across the street
4 - begin new book
The End
12 - Welcome Back
"Do you really think you should be playing God?" the female reporter asked.
"I don't think of it that way," replied Dr. Franks, a heavyset man with a dark beard and a receding hairline.
"Well, how do you think of it?" she asked, ready to record his response.
For at least the third time during the interview, the scientist had to make an effort to suppress his anger. He hated having to answer to the uneducated masses, but the foundation paid for his research grant, and if they wanted him to meet with a journalist there was no way around it. Fortunately, the time was just about up. "Will you look at that? It's three o'clock already."
"But you haven't answered my question."
"Perhaps some other time," Dr. Franks said as he showed her out.
"You certainly do have a scientist's hubris," she remarked.
"That's quite a fancy word."
"I'm a reporter. Vocabulary is my stock-in-trade," she replied. "Would you prefer a synonym? Conceit, arrogance, superiority. Take your pick."
The doctor forced a smile as he closed the door on his unwanted guest.
With a sense of relief, he left the conference room and returned to his lab. After he punched in his security code and showed his ID to the guard, he entered the restricted part of the laboratory. His young intern, George, eagerly approached and handed him a stack of papers. "Here are the latest test results on specimen number six," he said.
Dr. Franks flipped through the report as the two men walked past a series of numbered cages filled with creatures that existed nowhere else on the face of the Earth. They stopped in front of cage number six.
The doctor eyed his creatio
n with pride. "She's over two hundred pounds now. Hard to believe she was just a tiny lizard a few weeks ago. It's amazing what you can do with a few master genes," he said.
"And to think that people used to call them junk genes," George said.
"They just didn't understand. They're the on-off buttons of the genome. Change a handful, like we did in these specimens, and it radically changes the whole animal. Like turning a whole bank of lights on or off with just one switch."
"Hey. Are those...wings?" George asked as he took a closer look at specimen number six.
"Yes, I believe so."
"It's starting to look like—"
"A dragon?" the doctor said with a grin.
"Exactly," the young intern replied.
"Who knows, George? Perhaps dragons really existed sometime in the past. Most myths and legends are based in truth, you know. Maybe they evolved into modern lizards. Our experiment may simply be running history in reverse."
"We should probably beef up security," George said. "If specimen number six keeps growing, it could be a problem. Can you imagine what would happen if it escaped?"
"You worry too much, George. Science isn't our enemy, it's our salvation."
*****
Pepe came to this spot on the edge of the desert all the time because he knew this was the best place to catch lizards. It was simple: flip over a rock and catch a lizard before it scurried away. But you needed to be quick, and he was the quickest boy in the whole village.
Even though he'd been trying for hours, he wasn't discouraged. What else was there to do? Ever since the foreign factory opened, all the other children had become too sick to play.
Pepe turned over a rock. A tiny, red-striped lizard tried to flee, but the little boy's hands shot forward and grabbed the prize. He put the small creature into a box and headed back to the village, to the small hut he shared with his ten brothers and sisters. On his way home he passed the factory, that foreboding monstrosity that belched smoke every hour, day and night, polluting the water and the air with all manner of toxins.
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