a home away in the woods.

I took this test here, back in July 20th, 2005. I was with Tiff then, so you can see the way I thought with her, and the way I think now with Ash. There's a huge difference.

( This is me then. )

( This is the way I am now. )

Drastic difference. I love my Ash. I'm never leaving her.

Goldfish crackers are a rarity in this filthy underground country. There are still commercials for them and there are few souls that can’t recite the catchy jingle from the advertisements still played on the old-fashioned radios of the older generation. I only mention this because the beginning of this story starts with one small child and one very old package of goldfish crackers.

It is two days before Christmas. The child’s name is Nora, and she is eight years old. The package of goldfish crackers is an early gift from her grandfather and she cried when she opened it. She had never even seen one before, let alone tasted one. It was the best present she could have asked for. Now she sits on the floor with a goldfish in each hand and happily hums the jingle to herself, oblivious that she will never finish the whole bag. An alarm clock goes off in the next room. She sits quietly, waiting for someone to shut it off. The beeps persist and she wonders vaguely if she should get up and find someone to do it. It doesn’t occur to her that she is the only one left in the house. Slowly, she stands and makes her way to the door of the room.

She never makes it. It is at this time, as little Nora takes her last step, that the world comes to an end. The sky darkened hours ago but few people had looked out their window to see the sun disappear into nothing. It is not night, despite the darkness, and there is no moon, no stars. All there is, if anyone had been left to see it, was nothing.

The nothing seeped into the air and crawled into every small space. Nothing was everywhere and nothing was left. It was as if the world were suddenly empty.

When a person dies, his soul leaves the shell that is left behind. The bodies become materials for the world to build on, and the souls become the dust that makes dreams. When the nothing came, it swallowed everything, including the souls that tried to escape the useless bodies. Everything became nothing. There were no souls, no bodies, no hearts to beat, no memories to keep anything from becoming more than nothing. If there is nothing left to remember, was there anything there to begin with? I suppose it doesn’t matter since there is no one left to answer that question anyway.

There no longer is a little girl named Nora. There are no longer goldfish crackers smiling into their unsuspecting future, or a grandfather wanting nothing more than to keep his family happy. There are no more alarm clocks, or holidays. It is the end of everything.

It is not a terrible ending. Becoming nothing is probably the more favorable of ways to disappear. The end of the world could have been a terrible apocalyptic destruction that left a trail of fear in its wake. I could have described to you the death of little Nora in brutal detail as poison fell from the clouds and melted the skin off of the bones of the people still on Earth. I could have described to you the terror as families fled from the acidic blood that ran out the doors of their neighbors’ houses. I could have described the cruelty as man slaughtered man in rage and confusion and hatred until all people were dead from greed and jealousy and there was no one left to create a new world and all things died because of the self-loathing of mankind.

Instead, I build an ending for you of non-violence and unexpected kindness. Of a quiet intruder that vanquishes everything in deadly accuracy, leaving behind no feeling of fear or betrayal. Nora felt nothing as her very existence faded from reality. She didn’t miss her grandfather, or her dog, or even the goldfish crackers she had yet to eat. Just as she was becoming nothing, she felt nothing. There was no time for any other feeling except for that of confusion and annoyance at the constant sound of the alarm.

Every beginning must have an ending, and every ending brings about a beginning. But why did the lives of Nora and here dear grandpa have to end two days before their favorite holiday?

Because I hate Christmas. The end.

---

I really don't know. Take it how you want to. I was feeling particularly morbid when I wrote this.

There was a time I was a true believer in the greater force that lighted the night sky. But the moon has long since lost whatever kept her shining bright. She has caved and shrunken in, and where she was once round and voluptuous, she is now a shadow of her former beauty; a pageant queen who has lost her crown to the lulling power of heroin and crack. She is a junkie now, snorting stardust off the creamy nude backs of her worshipping mermen. It shouldn’t have been a surprise really; there had never been anything below her cratered surface. She had always been just a reflection of a million dreams and wishes from brighter beings than herself.

The first night I met her she was drowning. She went by the name of Ophelia, and she was drowning in the harsh glow of a spotlight as she crooned heartbroken lyrics into a dying microphone. She caught my eye and smiled and the stars that shone sang a sweet harmonious back-up. She told me later that she had been drawn to the mysterious figure who walked in during her song, though later she admitted she only wanted to talk to see me smile. I didn’t give in to her wish until we lay hidden in the dark room above the bar, tangled in black sheets damp with sweat. My lips left white scars on her otherwise unblemished skin, but she had known the price she would pay when she had pulled open my wool coat and slid the hood back from my face. She still wanted me even as she came to understand the pain involved.

She tasted of lotus leaves and mountain water – clear, filling, bitter. Her fingertips were cold and pleasurable as she explored my body, slowly and deliberately. I have yet to meet a woman whose touch left me gasping for breath like hers did. Her tongue was cold as ice, and as she followed the trail her fingers made, I wondered if it were possible that my heat would fade in her cool illumination. She brought me to the edge and back, but I never went out. As I went down on her, she screamed my name in an intense mixture of agony and magnificent glory. The dark spaces of her crystal body were on fire but she wanted more. I became afraid to go on. I was afraid of her chill cries.

I left her that night with clear tears staining her ivory face. She loved me, she said, but I knew better than to say it back. The cold night is not my time and I wouldn’t stay, not even for her. She didn’t last long after that, and it saddens me but I cannot blame myself. She had been heading down that way before I burned her, long before she threw herself into my flames. But though I know this, I still wonder if my light could not have shown her a different path, however impossible that may be.

I saw her last night, her eyes dim and hooded, her white hair falling in thin layers around her shallow face. The woman she walked with was pink as the first sunrise, and she giggled as she bounced past. Some thing white and soft slipped like snow to the ground from the small bag in her hand. The sparkle of it caught my eye but I dared not look further. My fair lover did not recognize me at first, but as she walked by, she felt my heat and turned, calling out my name. The frost that radiated from her being penetrated my heavy jacked, and I did not stop. She called once more and then I heard her move on, glowing as she did through the night, and giggling with her baby-faced girlfriend.

The nights have been incredibly dark on the far edges of the oceans. I lie in my bed of kelp and oyster shells and hide my face from the darkness. The moon rarely remembers names anymore, nor the wishes of the world sent her way. She has grown dark without the light of stars to surround her. In the morning, when I rise, she is nowhere to be seen and I fall into myself to stay warm. Her memory chills me to the core, a place no fire can reach.

I was once a believer of the rituals used to worship the moon. But with no moon, there is nothing to believe in anymore.

----

Advanced boredom at work.

They say it was the scholars who knew first. They say that the great books locked within the vaults of the King’s library had tales about a great wave that would swallow Atlantis whole. But nobody thought the tales were true. The problem with prophecies is that they are often mixed with stories and nobody can tell the difference.

They say that the one who wrote the stories, the prophecies, was a woman with brown eyes. So few Atlanteans were born with brown eyes that many who heard this believed it to be part of the story. But they say that she was a brown-eyed scholar who talked to no one but her two goldfish. She was a hermit; a woman of solitary nature who stood on the shore and stared at the ocean for hours at a time. She worked for the library and there were more scrolls in her handwriting than anyone else’s. She loved to write and loved to read and people left her alone for the most part. Some were weary because of her eyes, others were weary because of her tendency to stare at whoever was talking with such intensity that they because so flustered they couldn’t remember what they wanted to say. She was an odd one. No one knew how she died; they simply found her in her room at the library one morning, dead. She had at first appeared to be sleeping; her head was resting on a stack of parchment on her desk and her quill was still clenched tightly in her hand. The parchment, they discovered later, contained her last story, and out of compassion, they placed it in the vaults with all her others so that she would not be forgotten.

Her last story was about the fall of Atlantis. The day started with the glory of a perfect sunrise and the sky was blue and clear as the morning wore on. But soon the wind that blew became harsh and, with increasing speed, the clouds followed, dragging rain underneath their shadows like a moving anchor to the ground. Everything and everyone was drenched in minutes. The wind became frightening in intensity, and mothers were quick to draw in their children and their very-wet laundry. The call went out that a terrible storm was gathering over the ocean. It was so sudden and everything was happening at once – no one was prepared for what happened next. From the great towers that rose over the city, the King’s guards began to show and desert their posts, crying out for the families to get to high ground. A wave was coming.

The wave was coming.

It seemed after the initial, frantic dash for safety, time slowed down. People ran, but it was almost as if everyone were trapped within a cloud of resistant pressure. Families found each other and stood still – confused and frightened and unsure. Atlantis had no real high ground. There weren’t many hills and much of the inner city consisted of canals that ran between buildings and under bridges. These canals were not filled with people all trapped on this doomed island-city. Some souls attempted to get into boats, but the water in the canals had retreated out to the foreboding ocean.

It was dark. Something had blocked the sky and few dared to look up in fear that the world was ending. For a few precious moments, everything was quiet and everyone was still.

The wave had come.

Screams. Chaos. Water everywhere. And it kept coming from every direction. It was as if the Gods themselves were attempting to drown the once-great city. The wave hit everything as if it were a solid, giant hand. Not even the towers were left to stand over the ruins. Buildings and homes were in shambles. There was nothing left to the king’s home or his famous garden mazes – it was completely wiped out. The canals were filled beyond their capacity; the city was drowning. The water kept coming until the entire city had disappeared – lost beneath a great churning destructive wave that hit over and over again.

It lasted forever it seemed. But finally, the wave and the vast amount of water drained back out to sea, and what it left behind was devastating. Buildings were unrecognizable; the towers were in pieces in the bottoms of the canals. The endless gardens that had been Atlantis’ pride and joy were destroyed and all that was left were a few red petals floating in tiny pools. It was quiet but for the muffled rumbling of the storm as it moved off to wreak anger on a different civilization. The city lay open and empty. There were no bodies – no survivors and, yet, no casualties. It was if everyone had disappeared the moment the wave had hit. There was no one left in the fallen city. Perhaps all the people had simply been dragged out to sea and drowned in the wide ocean. Perhaps the Gods had pitied them seconds before they were die and came down and saved them all. Perhaps they had escaped somehow to make new homes on new lands. Whatever the case, no one was left to witness what would happen to the ruins after the wave departed.

It had been said that the ground under Atlantis was full of caverns and tunnels and that the foundation of the island was filled with holes that hid secrets of vast treasures and strange creatures. If that was true, they were as gone as the people that had lived above them. When the wave struck, it had hit the foundation as well and the great caverns had overflowed with water. The outgoing wave was so strong that many of the cavern walls were torn down upon impact. The foundation began to crumble and, slowly, the legendary city began to sink into the surrounding ocean. The water it had been born of was claiming Atlantis.

Many folks had laughed at this strange story and thought it made humorous, if not useful, entertainment to frighten their children into going to bed. NO one could possibly believe that Atlantis might one day sink into the unending ocean or be swallowed by a giant tidal wave. It was too great for that – too loved by the water Lords. It was too full of life.

They say that she was crazy but harmless and her brown eyes made people question her Atlantean roots. They say that she may have known first what would happen to them all, but when she died, no one thought that she had left behind a prophecy. They say – they said a lot of things but it doesn’t matter anymore. They disappeared with Atlantis and so did their gossip. They said no more. Atlantis is gone.

---

A middle story for Atlantis.

"I had a dream beneath the storytelling tree..."

There was once a man with a lame leg. He lived alone near the edge of the Leatman River where he could often be seen fixing the nets of the fishermen. He was not handsome to look at though he had a fine baritone voice. Because of his leg, he could not move fast enough to hunt or catch fish, but like any of the Paradise People he had his place. He fixed fishnets, sewed better than any of his brothers, and sang for the pleasure of all to hear. His stories were told in song.

One day, he sat in his usual place on the shore and began to string together little white shells for a necklace that he was making his brother’s daughter. She was his favorite for she liked to sit with him while he sang and she helped him unknot nets when his fingers grew tired. As he worked, he began to sing a song that sounded like the gentle comings and goings of the waves. It happened that on this day, the daughter of a great sea king was traveling up the river and heard the man’s fair voice and she instantly fell in love. Stepping out of the water, she beheld the man before he saw her, and her heart hurt to learn that such a strong song came from such a crippled being. But the River Daughter, for that is what she called herself, was a gentle soul and she loved him all the more. She raised her voice to match his and he looked up from his work with a start; but his voice barely fathered. Their words moved together like two swift currents in a river, back and forth and around and ended as a slow ripple that finally settled on the white sand of the shore. As they ended, he put down his work and she knelt before him.

“Your voice is like the sun reflected as a jewel on the calm river,” he said to her. “I’m sorry I do not stand before such a beautiful River Daughter-” The River Daughter held up a hand to stop him.

“I know you. I knew you the moment I heard you. Your voice is the strength of a wave building and growing as it moves closer to the great ocean of my Father. You are the man I wish to be with until all the waters on this Earth are dry.” She took his hand and bowed her head. “If you will have me.”

The man’s heart had filled to the brim with love long before her final word. Before the tide of the far ocean would turn once more, the two were married. Their voices became known through their people and many from distant lands to hear the song of the two lovers. They had many children and they had many grandchildren – and all of them grew to have strong minds, strong bodies, and strong songs. Their family lived by the river longer than any other. The Mother Matriarchs have long been descended from that line and in our own Mother’s song, you can hear the voices of her long ago ancestors – the crippled man with the lame leg and the beautiful River Daughter who loved him.

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Oh sap! Yeah, you know you like it. Don't tell anyone I wrote that...