* * *
7 years later…
“Not really… Look, you will find a way out of here, and you will find a way to pay for your crimes. I assure you of this.” and Owen was gone. Qen was alone in a wide open field by a street. The artifact, once blazing hot, cooled in his sweaty palms. The dwelf dropped to the dirt. Judging by the lay of the land, he was around Halfling-country, an hour or two north of Stonedale. He watched a few old pickup trucks and tractors roll by before he stood, and started hiking down the road. He had to find Owen, it was his responsibility. His duty.
* * *
The present…
When he came to, he was strapped to a conveyor belt. The room he was in was cramped, the ceiling somewhat low. He was cold, and stripped down to the dirty cloth pants he had worn on the way in. The last thing he saw before falling asleep was the reflection of his face upon a bronze buzzsaw spinning wildly above him.
When he awoke, he had a body made of brass, with arms of clockwork. Sharp hooks and chains were running through every last ounce of skin that he had left. He opened his mouth to speak but no words could escape, and he felt pain everywhere. Jars of red were pumping him full of some unknown liquid which he prayed to the gods was not blood. He looked up at Nassir, who stood over him, smiling like a father at a newborn baby.
“The pain inhibitors have not been activated yet. You have destroyed my last guardian, you disgusting pest. You are going to have to pay for it by becoming the new guardian. I look forward to working with you, my new lovely pet.” he grinned widely, his leathery skin pulled taught. Owen wanted nothing more than to kill Qen Marre at this point. The robed man gently wiped sweat from Owen’s forehead. “Welcome to the Pit.”
Home is not just a place . It is a state of being…
No Wereville
© 2013, M.F.Moose
“Wayne! Wayne Price you get out here before your daddy is as stiff as a sun dried possum on the waterway bridge.”
God damn it, I thought as I tossed the worn quilt off of my bed onto the floor. It is bad enough to have a hopeless drunk for a dad but this was just too much. The man hardly ever makes it to the pond and quite frankly I wasn’t sure if I cared anymore, anyway in two days I would be sixteen and I wouldn’t have to put up with this shit anymore.
I could hear the hose going full blast as my mom tried to keep dad moist. I slipped on the new flip flops she had bought me at the general store in Oak Island; at least they wouldn’t get ruined in the mud puddle, I had ruined more than one pair of shoes this way. I only had on my boxers but I knew no one important was going to see me so I didn’t even bother with my pants. I flung open the ancient screen door of our old house so hard it banged against the worn porch railing making all of my mom’s whirly gigs attached to the rickety railing shimmy and sway.
Of course my mother’s super natural ears heard the racket, “you be careful with my gigs,” she yelled, “that there is folk art and one day it will be worth something, you mark my words.”
I just shook my head and looked around the porch at the whimsical parade of wind powered creatures. It was a still night so they remained motionless, just gawking at me with their emotionless googly eyes.
There was the old fisherman rowing his boat, his paddles would whirl frantically in a stiff breeze, or the paddling duck whose feet flew around and around like the cartoon road runner. There was of course the classic flying cardinal, the quintessential swimming mermaid and what whirly gig collection would be complete without a pink flamingo but my favorite by far was the blue whale whose front flippers twirled around, it reminded me of my father.
I pulled the tattered old canvas sail out from under the bleached out wooden bench and proceeded down the structurally challenged steps to the path behind the old house that led down to the pond. As I rounded the corner I saw dad had not even managed to make it as far as the path.
There he lay in all his glory, giant bulbous eyes staring up into the night sky, his iridescent skin gleaming in the filtered light from the almost full moon that was seeping through the live oak canopy, one fin buried in the black mud and the other waving gently in thick night air. I angrily kicked a couple of empty pint bottles out of the way; they flew into the nearby brush only to clink against more bottles before finding their final resting place.
“How the hell am I supposed to get him on the tarp,” I grumbled, “he is half covered in mud.”
“You watch your language young man,” mom scolded me. “Spread the canvas out and I will help you roll him.”
“God damn it,” I mumbled under my breath just low enough so mom could not hear me over the spraying hose.
I spread out the oiled canvas and slowly me and mom managed to roll daddy onto the center of it. Fortunately in this state he is fairly rounded so once we got him unstuck from the black sand mud he rolled pretty well. Then I took logs from the wood pile and placed them around dad in a circle pulling the edges of the canvas up over them. I then made a quick check of several sewed repairs, stomped on them good and began to fill the makeshift pool. Within a few minutes daddy’s breathing became much easier as the water started to cover his head.
“Well,” said my mom with her usual tone of sarcasm, “that wasn’t so damn difficult now was it. I am going in and make some coffee; you keep the hose on him in case this thing leaks.”
I made a mental note that momma never watched her language but I was not about to point that out right now. Resigned to spending the rest of the night babysitting my dad I pulled one of the old wooden yard chairs, the one with the least broken seat canes, over to the edge of the tarp pool and sat down letting the stream of water arch up into the air and come down directly on the broad top of daddy’s head. He reminded me of a fountain I once saw in a travel magazine at the doctor’s office.
The first time my daddy didn’t make to the pond mom and me had tied a rope to his tail and pulled him down the path to the water but the rocks and sticks had cut his soft skin up something awful and he had been in a bad way for more than a week so we devised the canvas pool as an emergency solution. That had been almost five years ago and now the old sail was near bout worn out and daddy’s drinking was worse than ever. I knew we were going to find him dried up and dead one morning but no amount of reasoning with him could stop the drinking. Eventually I got tired of splatting water on his head so I put the hose end down in the water and leaned back in the flimsy chair.
Somewhere way out in the Green Swamp I heard an owl call and then I heard another owl answer. The swamp always called me in one way or another. I thought longingly about the dark waters that flowed silently between the cypress knees; I imagined swirling oak leaves and water striders dancing on the surface of the black waters as they moved ever closer to the sea. I had always loved the swamp, I loved the way it smelled, I loved the sounds it made, I loved the way the black silt squeezed up between my toes but most of all I loved the way it made me feel…suddenly dad began to thrash about and he knocked the hose clean out of the pool with his huge tail. I retrieved the hose and put it back in the water and then I gave daddy a few firm pats right in front of his dorsal fin and as usual that calmed him down.
Convinced that I had dad quieted down I returned to the wobbly lawn chair and resumed my vigil.
My daddy had been conceived in the Great Green Swamp; my grand momma Lola, God rest her soul, had told me the story over and over again but I never got tired of hearing it. She said it was the most magical night of her life and considering the thirty five years she had put in at the pogie fish factory I felt like she deserved at least one magical night in an otherwise numbingly dull existence. I knew the tale by heart, every word of it; as I leaned back to stare at the moon I could almost hear grand momma’s voice as she told it.
The year was 1901 and it was the most pleasant night of the year, not hot, not chilly just perfect. Never had so big a moon hung over the swamp, it was the color of fresh made butter and so bright you could make out the purple of the wisteria that
hung low over the canal as our little flat bottomed boat cut through to the main channel. Lightening bugs were everywhere and the air was thick with bats feasting on the mosquitoes, their excited squeaks filled the night air. I hung my hand out the side of the boat and let my fingers just kiss the surface of the water. Every now and then I thought I caught a glimpse of something silver, big and silver swimming alongside the boat.
I think my brother Thompson must have seen it too cause he yelled.
“Get your fingers in the boat Lola,” he said, “fore something bites them off.”
I just laughed and splashed him cause I was sixteen that night and nothing not even my awful brother could spoil it for me. Well he did not cotton to being splashed so as soon as we rowed across to main channel he headed up the first creek to Sandy Landing and when we got there he told me to get out.
“Get out of the boat you little brat,” he said.” I will pick you up on my way back. Don’t go past the hunting cabin and you will be fine.”
Then he tossed my frog gig, burlap sack and basket I had packed with food onto the beach and he took off. He did not even leave me a lantern but the moon was so bright I didn’t even care. I wasn’t afraid, I loved Sandy Landing. I knew he was meeting his friends up by the causeway bridge to drink liquor and he was going to drop me off anyway so I was glad it was here.
I watched as the light from the lantern hanging in the stern of the boat disappeared around the bend and then I waded onto the bank and sat down on the sandy beach. I swear to you the moon was so bright I could see clear to the bottom of the creek. I have never seen a moon like it before or since and as I stared at the shimmering reflection of the moon on the water the strangest thing began to happen.
One by one the lightening bugs came down from the sky and began to hover over the water just off the point of the beach. At first it was only a few but one by one they came until there must have been thousands hovering right over the water twinkling like little yellow stars. Gradually they formed a tight ball that looked like an earthly version of the giant moon above and the yellow light lit up the waters around Sandy Landing until they were glowing like honey in a jar held up to the sun.
Then I saw it again the thing that had been following the john boat, a flash of silver darted through the amber water and out into the darkness beyond the light and then it came back again but this time it swam slower and I could make out the body of a great fish.
The giant fish began to swim in a circle beneath the glowing ball of lightening bugs. I watched mesmerized as its body started to twist and change. I wasn’t sure if it was just the way the water makes things look funny or if he was really changing but soon I realized that he was indeed changing right there before my eyes like a tadpole becomes a frog only quicker. First his tail split and two legs formed and then arms sprouted out of his body, tiny at first but then they grew and grew until he was using then to swim. He swam round and round as he continued to change and I watched as his head became rounded and longer; then he stopped swimming, he rolled over in the water and looked straight up at me.
Now I am not going to lie, at this point I was just bout scared to death, scared enough to want to run but something held me there, I could not look away. I was raised a Baptist and I knew that whatever was in the water looking up at me was not from the pages of the Good Book unless of course it was a demon and if that was the case I figured I could not out run it anyway so I just sat and stared as it swam towards the shore.
He rose up out of the water and the lightening bugs broke up from the tight ball and flittered around bathing him in their eerie chemical light until they flew off into the night; then he stood there naked in the moonlight. I have four brothers so a naked boy was not something I had never seen before but I had surely never seen one so pretty. His skin was like fresh milk as white and as smooth as my cousin Cindy’s baby’s skin but he had muscles that rippled beneath that perfect skin like the tan sweaty young men who worked on the shrimp boats down in Varnum Town. His hair was wet but I could tell it was as black as coal and it hung to his shoulders. He had a face like one of those fancy actors I had seen in the theater in Wilmington with fine high cheekbones, a straight nose and a perfect mouth. As he stood up straight he took in a deep breath, then smiled and licked his lips as if the air tasted like taffy.
He glanced up into the sky at the butter colored moon and then he looked back at me with eyes as flat and black as the bottom of a well. His eyes startled me and I began to scoot back across the sandy beach; I thought I might could make it to the hunting cabin and bar the door but then he spoke and his voice was sweeter than rain on a tin roof or the wind in the oaks and I could not move.
“Lola Price,” he said. He knew my name and my mouth hung open in shock.
I began to say the Lord’s Prayer mainly because it was the only prayer I knew by heart and I had some vague hope that it might repel this thing which I was now sure was a demon, how else could it know my name?
After I had finished the prayer he just stood there looking at me with his head cocked slightly to the side like a dog hearing a strange noise.
“Leave me alone demon,” I said with as much courage as I could muster.
He smiled a slow delicious smile as if he was going to devour me in one bite but instead he spoke again. “I am no demon, or at least not as I understand the word. I am not a servant of the arch nemesis of the god that is now worshipped here, oh no I am the son of a much older goddess, one whose name has been forgotten by your kind,” he paused, “ but she does not hold that against you.”
“So you are not going to kill me?” I asked and I finally took in a deep breath cause I don’t think I had breathed since he stepped out of the water.
“Oh quite the contrary,” he replied as he walked on out of the water. I could not help but stare at his nakedness and he noticed.
“Please forgive me,” he said as he glanced down, “I forget that your kind has become so uncomfortable with your own skin that you need to cover it.”
He glanced at the burlap bag I had brought to put frogs in. “May I,” he said as he gestured to the bag.
I nodded and he picked up the bag and wrapped it around his hips like my daddy did with a towel when he got out of the shower.
“There now,” he said, “feel better?”
I nodded again.
“Not everyone turns sixteen on the night of the Goddess Moon you know,” he said as he sat down beside me on the sand.”You are a very special girl Lola Price and the Goddess has noticed; she wishes to give you a gift.”
Well no one had ever said I was special 'cept maybe my momma and daddy but parents always say stuff like that so it doesn’t mean near as much as when it comes from a magical fish man so I think it kind of went to my head a bit and I do like gifts, so I was curious.
“A gift,” I said cautiously, “what kind of gift?”
“Oh something very special,” he said with another dazzling smile. “But first lets have some fun, is that a frog gig I see, I love to eat frogs more than just about anything else. Are you good at catching them?”
“I’m the best, not a one of my brothers comes even close to catching as many frogs as I do,” I said boastfully, but it was true.
“Prove it,” he said as he stood up and gestured towards my gig with his long white arm.
And prove it I did. In the next hour or so we caught more frogs than I had ever gotten even on the best frog hunt of my life which had been after the Fourth of July picnic two years ago. I used my basket to hold them until it was just plum packed with big old frogs. I was so tuckered out from all the effort I sat back down on the sandy beach.
“So let’s eat,’ he exclaimed eying the basket of freshly caught frogs.
“We have to cook them first,” I said with a giggle.
“Nonsense,” he said as he reached into the basket and pulled out a really big one. Then he opened his mouth mighty wide and swallowed the frog whole. He smiled real big as the hind feet flapp
ed against his lips before they went down.
He managed to say the word delicious before he pulled out another one and it went down the same way. I am sure my mouth was hanging open wide enough by now to have swallowed one myself and he continued until he had eaten pretty near half the frogs in the basket; then he stopped.
“Well that was a fine dinner Miss Price, I do thank you,” he said like a southern gentleman. “I hope I have left enough for your family, sometimes I just forget myself when it comes to frogs…so delicious.”
He stood up and stretched and I thought he was going to lose the burlap bag but he gracefully grabbed it just in the nick of time.
“I must give you something to thank you for such a fine meal.”
He pulled off the sack and dove into the water off the beach. As I sat and waited listening to the cicadas and frogs I convinced myself that it had never been real and that I had dreamed the whole thing up but suddenly the water broke and up popped his handsome head complete with the dazzling movie star smile. He walked out of the water and politely nodded as he wrapped the burlap sack around his waist.
Goggles, Gears, and Gremlins (SteamGoth Anthology Book 3) Page 7