TFW CH 22 GOOD TASTE

Than You’ll Ever Know   by Gary Moore  

The dark figure poured blood from his wide-opened arms. 

He had asked for a hug.  Who could ask such a thing in such a manner?

The young woman backed away from the sight of them two men in the bathroom.

One lied in a pool of his own blood, and the other one had been drinking it.

And eating.

Sven took a step towards her, dripping and oozing blood from his morning repast, and his back now felt mighty good. 

He had adjusted his spine. 

The girl who said she was “Shelly” looked quite tasty to him.

Shelly said, “You been up to some bad shit.”

Sven nodded.  He took another step.

Shelly said, “I know what’s going on.”

Sven  paused.  This piqued his curiosity.

She said, “We both been down there.”

Sven cocked his head.  Who was this girl? 

He said, “Down where?”

She said, “Don’t fuck with me.  I know what you are doing here and now.”

Sven threw his arms up and as he did, a large couple of slings of dark blood flew up and forward and fell onto Shelly.  He tilted his head back and howled.

Sven laughed and shouted at the ceiling.  He said, “Then you know what I have in mind for you!”

But Shelly didn’t move.

Sven’s shoulders slumped and he lowered his arms.  He looked at this brazen tart before him.

Who was she?  She had not run off, nor had she slipped in the splotches of dark liquid in the hallway, fallen, and then made herself vulnerable for his next meal.

She had stood her ground.

He said, “Shelly?  Are you a shell, or a shill?  Are you Shilly?”

She licked her lips.  She was hungry.

She said, “My real name is Sherry, not Shelly.  Who are you?’

Sven got the shivers.  Here was someone who had a fucking clue.

He did not know how to respond.

And, do you know, everything depended on this thing.

Sven  did not have a clue.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

 .

TFW CH 21 Are You WELL?

Fear Of Ghosts  by The Cure  

“Hello?”

The shrill ring of a young woman’s voice echoed down the hallway from beyond the opened front door.

Silence welcomed her into the cottage.

OK, then.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her.  The dogs were barking outside in the morning, you know.

In the interior of the gloomy cottage, she heard soft whimpering and a bit of gurgling.  Her shoe slipped in something sticky on the floor and she looked down.  Someone had dropped splotches of coffee on the floor, and they led down the hallway.

Sven clawed his way back to consciousness, grabbing at the slippery walls of his dark mental well.  He saw a glint of sunlight and heard footfalls that echoed down the hallway.

That is always the best way to wake up, isn’t it?

Now listen: after you have experienced injury, you must check yourself.  You have to make certain that you are not mortally injured nor have lost your face in a fight.  It takes feeling from the inside to the outside with gentle movements.

Sven did this, as he heard the soft squish of footfalls in them pools of blood.

Like keys jangling on a kitchen floor.

Whose memory was that, anyway?

Sven slowly rolled over in the darkened pool of blood onto his elbows and knees.

He looked up at the face that peeked around the corner of the bathroom doorway.

The young lady stood back in horror.  She shouted.  She said, “Is that you?  That other guy is gross!  What happened?!”

Sven got up with his clothes drenched and pouring dark blood and he said, “I’m back, baby.  Wanna have some fun?  Hugs!”

Huh.

Sven was a bit touchy-feely. 

He could have gotten fired from his job.

But do you know, my friend,

His next victim was not his boss.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

TFW CH 20 BREAKFAST

Lost Innocent World   by Gogol Bordello   

Sven watched his prey slip about with the rubbery clump of nose and cheeks from a panicked hand and the stump of a blood-spurting wrist.  His hand flopped about, hanging by tendons from it.

He howled, and Sven joined him.  He harmonized with the Chauffeur.  It was a pretty mourning tune, just before first tea and ciggy.

The Chauffeur’s face fell onto the floor as his eyeballs depleted their contents.  He saw white light.  In addition to physical sensation, the human eye interprets pain in its own way and then and delivers its message of bright white light to the brain, you see.

Sven stood back and marveled at his good fortune.  Indeed, if he had been sloppy and announced his attack, it would have went the other way for him.

The Chauffeur slumped down to his knees and began to beg for his life.  That was Sven’s favorite part.  It was like music to his ears.

He had done this many times before, you know.  He kicked the man down onto the floor, bent over him, and shouted into his mess of a face. 

He said, “Good Morning!  Breakfast is ready.”

He sat down on the man's torso, knees on those flailing arms, and inserted the carver into the throat of the man and cut out the voice box.

He had always enjoyed the sounds his victims made while he dined on them, but he was new to this place, and wanted to be stealthy.

Yet, he was simply ravenous.

While he chewed and savored the cartilage of the man’s adam’s apple, he heard a knock on the front door. 

He straightened right up and his back jolted with a lightning bolt of white hot pain.


He yelped and fell hard into the pool of blood.  He twitched about in screaming, silent pain, much like the man beside him.

He spat out the chewy clump of cartilage.

A woman’s voice called out from outside the front door, echoing down the hall.

He looked over at the man who squirmed beside him in the spreading pool of bright red fluid.  Sven hissed at the living skull on the floor of the bathroom.

He said, “Don’t make a sound, bony face.  Otherwise, will be very bad for you.”

Sven rolled over and eased onto his knees.  He placed his forehead onto his forearms and stretched his back to the ceiling with gentle breaths.  As he got his spine at the highest point, he paused for a moment.

This was going to hurt.

He exhaled all of the way out, pointed his vertebrae up as high as he could, and then inhaled with sudden vehemence against his injury.

He felt and heard his back make a loud POP noise and the intense pain shoved him face-first into the puddle and then convulse.


He was completely bathed in blood.

Lovely, exquisite pain enveloped his mind.

As he slipped down into the depths of release from the endorphins his host’s brain afforded him, he heard the knock again at the front door.

He heard a young woman’s voice echo down the hallway, and down the slippery walls of his darkening mental well. 

She said, “Hello?  It’s Shelly!  Hello?  Are you in there?”


There was no response.


She said, "Are you OK?"



Nothing.



She said, "I'm worried about you!  I'm coming in."

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

TFW CH 19 PAY BACK

Sven didn’t mean to eat the chauffeur.

He really didn’t.

Yet,

You know by now that the hunger of a cannibal can never be satiated.

It’s just that he tried to be civil.

Here’s how it went down.

Bloodletting   by Concrete Blonde  (a marvelous find by waahoohah)

Sven walked to the door of the cottage, and the chauffeur followed.

In the pink sunlight that glowed between the elm trees, over the wide, manicured greens beyond, Sven had a moment that made him shiver.

Here at this place was an opportunity that afforded great power.  He could pay the man the money that was in the hidden pocket of his expensive track suit and get some sleep.  It had been one hell of a long night in the bowels of the asshole of the desert.

He opened the door and the man rushed and kicked Sven down from behind.

Sven went sliding across the hard tile on the small rug and the Chauffeur slammed the door behind them.

He knelt down over Sven and turned him over.  He said, “I want all of your money you selfish rich bitch.”

Sven had the breath knocked out of him from the kick and his back jolted with spasms.  He struggled to catch his breath, but the Chauffeur wasn’t having it.  He punched Sven in the solar plexus just below the ribs, and Sven saw the room go grey and begin to tilt away.  The bastard was going to punch him into unconsciousness and then probably tie him up before he awakened.

Sven knew about such things.  Torture: lovely and exquisite pain awaited him, after a brief moment, a wink in time for his own awareness of his surroundings.

The Chauffeur bent down as Sven’s eyes rolled back in his head and shouted in his face, “Nighty Night.”

Sven wrapped his arms around the man’s head and opened his mouth wide as he pulled the man close.

He gnashed his jaw closed around the cheeks and nose of his new victim and he bit hard and shook furiously left and right until they tore away.

As he fell into the darkness, he heard the shrieks of pain from the Chauffeur echo along the walls of the well of his mind, fading away.

He awoke again with a throbbing head ache and his breath coming back in hitches.  He tasted the intoxicating flavor of iron from blood in his mouth, and he licked his lips.

The world steadied itself, and he looked about.  His back let him know that it was not pleased with the welcome home from the boot of the Chauffeur with what felt like prods of white hot steel.

He steadied himself with his elbows and crept over onto his side.  His breath came back fully now, but the hiccups jolted his back.  He was fucked up.  He saw on the tile a great many splotches of dark, red blood, and they lined up into a path that led off to another part of the cottage.

His attacker would be found in the bathroom, probably trying to put his face on.

The hiccups were causing him too much pain in his back to be able to fight.  At the risk of fading back into unconsciousness, he held his breath to get rid of them.

Now listen.  The cure for hiccups comes in many forms, but to halt them efficiently and quickly, one must understand them.  Here is what is going on:  For whatever reason, the diaphragm (the muscle that causes air to be drawn into the lungs) is having spasms.  The only way to prevent the diaphragm from doing this is to expand it until it can’t contract again.

How?

Simply intake as much air as you can until you can’t take in anymore.  But don’t hold your breath.  You have to keep trying to inhale more, non stop; keep trying to expand that diaphragm.  After the period of time when three or four hiccups would have happened, the diaphragm should decide to stop having spasms.

Don’t test it by coughing, or they may return.

Sven did this thing, and while he was, he heard whimpering from down the hall.  Water was running.  His breath and his back stopped having spasms, but his back continued to throb.  Sucker kick to the back.  Bastard deserved to have his face torn off.

He appreciated the effort of his new enemy.  Sven had left himself vulnerable, and this was his punishment.  He would not allow it to happen again.

He knelt and put his head down low and began to curve his backbone out towards the ceiling, stretching the muscles there.

In a bit, he rolled to his side and arose from that position, not using his spine.

He eased forward, testing his back as he walked, and turned left into the kitchen.  Anything he found would do, but he was fond of knives.  There on the counter was a large wooden block with many types of cutting tools in their wells.

He chose the cleaver and the carver.  He held the cleaver with the blade up, and the carver with the blade down and forward.  One was for chopping, and the other would slice with a passing forward thrust.

He would cleave meat from bone.  A nose and cheeks were not the only things left on the Chauffeur’s skull.

Sven sneaked down the hall, avoiding the blood.  He needed good, dry traction on the soles of his tennis shoes.  Thank goodness his laces were tied up.  Back in the time period of the 1980’s, it was the style to walk about with laces undone.

He saw the pool of light on the floor from a room on the left, and the sounds of whimpering grew louder.  Certainly, the man would be facing a mirror. He might even be in a state of shock, and that would only help Sven.

He would have to make sure that he would have the element of surprise, or he would face a struggle.  His back would not be his ally. 

He reached the edge of the doorway and held the large, gleaming side of the cleaver so that it reflected the floor in his sight, and then he slid a short length of it beyond the door frame and turned it a bit.  In the reflection of the blade, he saw the man’s fancy cowboy boots.  They were black.  They were pointed to the left. The mirror must be on the left wall and not directly opposite of the doorway.  That was good.

He twisted the blade up a bit more and saw the man with both hands up to his face, trying to arrange a bloodied mass against it.

The running water (why run water when you are trying to save face?) hid his quickened footfalls.

He raised the cleaver up high and swung down as he closed in on the Chauffeur.  The heavy blade met with the wrist of the man before him, and the hand attached to it fell away, hanging by tendons.

Sven had won, just like that.

The Chauffeur looked down at his hand dangling there and said, “Oh no!  How could this have happened?”

Indeed, he was in shock already.

He turned to look just as Sven punched forward, and the front edge of the carver blade sliced across the man’s eyes.

Sven stepped back to marvel at his work.  He had been lucky. But he knew how to make use of such luck. 

And it had saved him.

Now he would eat, and then rest for a few hours.

He had a big day ahead of him.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out

Like Clockwork    by QOTSA  

TFW CH 18 MEET THE PURPLE ROBES

Welcome to Hell, baby.

This song is for the Walkin Cannibal.

He was gonna try to build something.  What do you think would happen?

Bit by Bit   by Mother Mother  

Sven closed the door to the purple BMW he had stolen from the young man whose body he now inhabited.  Sven had killed the young man’s friends and then set them on fire.

Hey, don’t judge him. Them kids had inserted hypodermic needles filled with a liquid suspension of heroin into their veins. 

They saturated themselves in such an ugly way.  They had become colloidal, and that was when the monster we know as Sven needed a torch. 

He’d cut off one of his victim’s legs and used it as a light source.  You know, them tennis shoes light up pretty good, up on the end of a leg bone with tasty calf meat hanging there and dripping…

Sven leaned back against the car and folded his arms.  He appraised the shitiation before him.

He stood on white quartz pebble stones in a circular driveway before a three story mansion.

Of course, it was a faint lavender in color.  Yet, this was not due to house paint, nor cheap plastic siding, or even a dye rinse for a party.

The mansion of the Purple Robe was covered with lilac marble.  Lovely striations ran through the violet marble in stately veins of deep, dark purple.

Sven whistled low.  He adjusted his shades under the early morning sun that glinted over the tops of the elm trees on either side as the birds chirped and the hunting dogs began their barking way off in the kennels.

These sounds echoed across the wide, immense grounds in his head.  Any other sort of person might feel awe and imminent disclosure, but this was no ordinary man.

He was a bit of a cannibal Walkin, you recall.

Sven was fucked-up to begin with, and he was hungry.

He awaited the staff to greet him, and he knew that they would, but inside him, underneath it all, he had a bit of the shivers. 

Would he do well? 

Here was an opportunity, and it was one that he didn’t want to waste.

He could do marvelous things. 

Great wealth affords a ticket for great power if done right.

He shivered simply because this sort of thing was what he liked to do.

He was like a Springer Spaniel, wagging his whole body in preparation for a toss of the ball.

He minded himself and looked about.

There was no car garage off to the right of the lavender mansion, nor a gate-keeper’s shed off to the left.

No such evidence of the menial world was in sight.

Instead, the white quartz took winding paths away and off under high elms and across golf-course lawns in the distance.

Your car would be driven away, and then returned to you if you simply asked.

Indeed, a hastily dressed man with a chauffeur’s cap came running from behind the building.  He paused, took a few breaths, and then walked to Sven in a professional manner.  He looked up, back over his shoulder at the roof of the mansion.

Sven looked up to where the chauffeur glanced, and became aware of tiny sparks of light here and there.

The white quartz driveway was reflected in the lenses of rifle scopes.

Sven adjusted his tie, so to speak.

My Number   by Foals  

The chauffeur stopped short and extended his hand. He said with gusto, “Well met, Prince Richard!  Why did you stop here in the front?  You got all the guns out again up there.”

Sven shrugged.  He said, “Been up to no good.  Fuck it.”

The chauffer smirked.  He said, “Fuck it all indeed!” 

Then he whispered, “I’ve been with the new quarter maid, and her name is Sherry.  She is quite a tart.  OK, let’s get you to your cottage.”

Sven nodded, dropped the keys into the open palm of the chauffeur, and watched him run around to the passenger side door and open it.

Sven understood.  He made an act of staggering around to that side of the car and when he got there, the chauffeur helped young, drunk Prince Richard into his seat. 

Once in the driver’s seat with the door closed, the chauffeur drove away from the front of the mansion.  He crept the car along slowly so as to not spill the white quartz upon the freshly watered grass, and when they had gone on long enough, he said, “That Sherry is quite lovely.”

Sven grunted.

The chauffeur nodded.  He said, “Excuse me, sir, but did you have a lovely time as well, last night?”

Sven nodded, pretending to be wasted.

The chauffeur said, “That’s great!  I am so happy for you.  Great times await us all, isn’t that right?”

Sven grunted again.

Then the chauffeur said, “Sir Richie, did you get my stuff?”

Sven just stared ahead.  He waited. 

You see, when you don’t have a fucking clue about a situation that you find yourself in, nor even know the name of the person in front of you, then all you have to do is wait. 

It helps if you appear to be wasted.

Surely enough, they will give you your information.

The chauffeur said, “I fucking gave you three-thousand dollars worth of heroin, and all you do is sit there like a dumb ass?  How dare you!  Where is my profit?!”

Sven nodded.  Inside, he was quite happy.  It began to make sense.  The prodigal son, whose body he now inhabited, had been dealing heroin in the ugly parts of Fuckno.

Why do such a thing, if you are extremely wealthy, borne into privilege? 

The answer is that those who have not lived poor, or struggled to make ends meet, or faced impending doom,

…well…

Them privileged kids get bored.

Sven turned and smiled at the chauffeur.  He said, “I’m just fucking with you!  Let’s get to my cottage and I will make you happy again.”

The chauffeur’s shoulders slumped back down and he giggled.  He said, “You bastard!  You always do this to me!  You think I would learn by now.  Whew!”

Sven smiled.

He was going to have himself some fun.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out

Life’s Son  by Macaco  

TFW CH 17 ANGER AND HUNGER

This Kid’s Not All Right   by Awol Nation  

The naked punk rocker sat atop the hill under the bright, hot sun and clamped his big fat hands over his eyes.  He was angry.  He screamed.  He said, “Who the fuck woke me up?!”

The Glinty turned to us from halfway up the hill and waved his arms like he was trying to get us to line up for a photo op.  We crowded up and he placed himself between the angry baby and us.  Then he turned back and climbed up a bit higher to Fat Jerry. 

He looked up and said, “You done had yourself a long enough slumber.  Time to rise and shine, lazy bones.  You and me got us some bidness awaitin’ us.” 

Jerry wiped his face with his palms and squinted at the old man who stood just below him near the top of the hill.  He said, “Not long enough.  Never too long before having to see the likes of you again.”

Glinty said, “Well, Good Morning to you as well, creepy dude.  You see, them boys need our help now.”

Jerry shook his head.  “They always need help.  Last time, the crying one ran me over with my own fucking hearse.  Can you believe that shit?  A man run over by his own damned car.  That shit don’t cut it.  Nope, it don’t cut it at all, you old fucker.”

I looked up at Tellesco beside me.  His cheeks were flushed, and he just shrugged back down at me.  Huh.  How about that.  Dude had some balls after all, I figured.

The Glinty shook his head.  He said, “None of this is fair.  Never has been.  You were going a bit below and beyond the call of duty.  That’s what you get when you go fall to temptation.  You might get run over.”

Jerry got up on one knee and then stood up on the hill.  He stretched his arms to the sky, inhaled deep, leaned his head back and yawned real big.  He let his breath out with a howl.  He looked back down at the preacher and said, “Someone comes to save your ass: you don’t fucking run him over with his car, and then steal it!”  

Then he looked over the preacher’s hat. 

He pointed his finger at us. 

He said, “YOU!”

That was our cue to head back to the cabin and make a pot of tea and a plate of crumpets for a nice little chat by the hearth.  What the hell is a crumpet, anyway?

All we heard behind us was some huffing and puffing as we ran up the hillside.  I don’t think anyone took the time to look back.  I know I didn’t.  I just wanted to keep ahead of Tellesco. 

The Glinty shouted from where he stood on that frigging well-hill.  He said, “Come back and grab your damn clothes!  Get your fucking boots on ya damned clown!”

Yup. 

We’d dug up a huge naked punk rocker who was now chasing us with murder in his eyes.

All before lunch.

Sweet Mountain River   by Monster Truck 

An army of the Walkin was loose upon the nether regions of Fuckno.

No one was safe from them.

At all.

One Walkin felt right at home. 

It was the first time for the likes of a Walkin.

S E E N

“She knelt down to look at the tiny spark.  It winked out a bit and was gone.  Then it came back again.  She grabbed it and brought it up to her face.  She could see someone inside it.  It was like a tiny window.  She was looking through this tiny spark into another place.”  ---From The Fuckno WarsCh 31   Interview

The streets in the much maligned and desolate trail of sludge left behind the ugly King of the desert were alive with hunger.

Fuckno devoured farmland to the north and regurgitated gated communities up there, and shit out despair and horror in its wake, and this was before the infection of the cannibal Walkin had come to town.

Seen drove in his stolen Jeep with a rumble in his belly.  He scouted for his next meal.  He passed houses on fire, car wrecks, and bodies lying in the street.  Thank goodness for the chunky treads on them fat tires.  He didn’t mind a bump now and then.  The bodies of the dead were speedbumps for him.

Whump-a-bump…  Whump-a-bump..

He looked in his rearview mirror and saw bodies rolling around behind him, spilling entrails from their asses, their middle parts, and their mouths.

Them crooked vultures would have a feast in the hot sun.  He chuckled. They were kindred to him.

Already the air quality was bad in the slums.  The stink of fetid death simmered on the hot tar and there was no breeze.

A sane person would not be hungry, but sanity had left this area without its boots.

Always mind your leather.

Seen saw a man with one arm, holding what appeared to be a skeletal arm in the other, and he was chasing a woman.   It was Lenny Sustenuto. 

Seen did not know who the man was, nor what it meant.

He pulled the Jeep up onto the sidewalk, sped up and ran the woman over, then backed up over her again.

He hopped out, and Lenny swung his skeletal arm at him, screaming.  Seen stepped back as the arm swung by, and then hopped forward and kicked Lenny down to the ground.

Lenny rolled around on the ground, clambering for his bony weapon.  He said, “That’s my meal!  Fucking thief!”

Seen put his foot on the man’s neck and bent down low.  He looked right into Lenny’s eyes and said, “You look like a meal yourself, you know.”

You recall,  Lenny had opened the Gates of Hell, and he did not know that he had.


But do you know, these two would come to make an alliance.


One that would matter.

Only one thing.


Lenny was in dire need of a new body to inhabit, for the gangrene was infecting his whole body.


Seen would help him with that, without knowing that he would.


He knelt down and pulled Lenny's face up to his own.  He whispered into Lenny's face.


He said, "You smell pretty bad, bud.  Wanna go for a ride?"


Then he took a bite.

Big Log   by Robert Plant  

S V E N

Sven stopped his stolen purple BMW and looked over at the mansion.  He was home.  Nobody there would know that he wasn’t the prodigal son, done returned home, if he could figure his way.  As you know, Sven was very intelligent.

He simply had to make his way.

Debruilliage, baby.

See you this weekend.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

TFW CH 16 GET YOUR BOOT ON

Stealing All Day   by C.C. Adcock 

The hardest thing can be to admit when you are wrong, especially when it is because you are afraid of going forth.

Or turning around to face your fears.

There is no exit, there is no escape.  There is only the entrance to the next part of the tale in your own life.

Time flows in one direction.  There is no Delorian you can punch to 88 MPH and change things.

So what can you do?

Hindsight woulda shoulda is for chumps.

But if you can apprise a shitiation before you make a decision, and not base it solely upon fear, then that is a skill you might want to fine tune, like a carburetor.

I had no such skill.

But the decision would be made for me.

You see, I was haunted.

I was being chased by a demon.

And he wanted to be released.

He was the Fat Jerry punk rocker.

Joey followed me as we trudged up to the top of the ridge to head back down the other side.  My little sisters and my momma awaited my help.

Joey had his own family that were probably wondering where in the hell he was, and if he was OK.

The wind blew hard as them poor saps dug their little holes in the sand around the empty well. 

They cast their pitiful handfuls of sand at the well and the wind chust carried it up and all over the damn place.  What the fuck were they doing? 

I had no clue.  It was not the amount of sand that they threw.  There was no way in hell that they would be filling up that damned well.  It had to do with something else. 

It was about their faith in the old preacher, in his method.

He’d told them to help him raise something up, and they followed his lead.

The wind blew the sand up into the air and it became a cloud of sand that got in everyone’s face.  But they kept right digging and flinging sand in spite of that.

As the wind began to scream, the sand whipped me in the face and it felt like sandpaper on my cheeks.

I stopped to look over at Joey.

He was stopped too.  He looked back at me from under his cupped hand and nodded back at them other men.

From where we stood, them men almost made a circle around the empty well. 

It looked like they had made room for me and Joey to join them.  But no one shouted at us to come back down the hillside.

Only the wind did the talking.

I shrugged and turned to continue on.  Fuck that shit.  They were fools.

The wind buffeted me and then Joey fell backward and rolled down the hill.

I staggered over to him as the wind picked up and whistled in my ears.  What the hell was going on?

He rolled over on his knees and squinted up at me.  He said, “Weeeee-ill!  I can’t see!  I got…” 

I couldn’t hear the rest of his statement because the wind pushed him over from his knees and he began to roll down the hill.

I chased after him, yelling at him in the howling wind.  I said, “Don’t rub your eyes! Don’t fuck them up!”

Of course, he was not in any position to either hear me and heed or do anything other than flail about like a rag doll as he tumbled down the hillside.

He ended up at the well.

Well, so did I.  I wasn’t going to leave him behind.

I growled and then I shouted in my anger.

But ya see, anger can come from fear.  And I had it.

I was a fucking coward, running off.

You never leave a man behind.

You never leave anyone behind.

Like I had done to my little family in the wide valley of the desert of Fuckno.

I shouted at them men, and they were still casting their handfuls of sand at the well.

The ground rumbled.

The Glinty said, “Get down!  We need you here!  Start your digging!  Ain’t no way out but in doing this here thing!”

My skin crawled as I knelt there beside Joey.  I helped him up in the dust storm and shouted at his ear.  I said, “Don’t open your eyes!  Don’t rub them!  Can you dig?”

Joey was crying now, and I had never, ever seen him do this before.  He said, “I’m fucking blind!  I can’t see a thing!  Help!”

I grabbed him and held him close.  I said, “Fuck it!  Let’s throw some sand and then I’ll carry you up that fucking hillside back to the big truck!”

He shivered under my arm and nodded.

We set to digging and threw a couple of handfuls of sand at the general direction of the well.

It didn’t matter anymore.  No one had a clue, because no one could see anything anymore.

We each and all had our eyes closed, just tossing sand in the wind.

Can faith be forced upon you?

Well, I don’t know about that, but if you are forced to face your fear, then maybe that is a new religion.

At any rate, we dug the sand like them poor bastards and chucked it at the well.

The wind stopped.

Sand fell from the air above us with a loud “Harrumph!” sound and the desert was still.

The sun beat down upon us from the east, and Joey kept right on digging and tossing sand, tears streaming down from his eyes.

The rest of us sat back and wiped our faces.  We opened our eyes and looked around at each other.

We saw Joey the Little lion man who kept right on with his chores, and then the ground began to hum.

I laid my hands down on Joey’s arm to make him stop.  He sat back and turned to me.  He said, “Weee-ill.  I think I’m blind.”  His tears came harder.

I said, “Let me take a look.  Open your eyes.”

He did, and they were red.  He said, “I can see!”

I looked at his corneas and did not see a single speck of sand on them.  His tears had flushed the desert silt from them.

The ground began to rumble.

Came Back Haunted   by Nine Inch Nails  

The Glinty got up off his knees and sand poured down off his shoulders and his cowboy hat.  He took his hat off and shook it.  He looked over and pointed at the well.

He said, “Look!”

The well overflowed with sand.

It was full.

Hah?

Yup.  The well was full.

How could something like that have happened?

The ground trembled like the earth was awaking from a nightmare and it was in bad mood.

Joey squinted up at me and he said, “I’m so happy that I ain’t blind!”

I was going to tell him how happy I was for him, and then I got shook off my knees.

We all did.

The Glinty shouted.  “Get away!  Get away NOW!”

I scrambled away in a panic and shouted back at him.  “What the hell?!”

He rolled away and said, “I ain’t never done this before!”

What the-

The well began to rise up.  Swear to Lawd Almighty, the stone walls of the well rose up, and they split apart from each other, rolling away from the rising mound of desert silt.

The ground raised higher like a pregnant belly full of anger.

This was not going to be pretty.

Indeed, the sand purged out of the well and then a boot stuck out of the ground.  It was covered on the front by a gleaming shin guard made from chrome.

It glinted in the sunlight, and it blinded my eyes.

The Glinty shouted at us as the earth beneath us settled back down. He said, “Breach!”

He scrambled up the small hill to the well and said, “Come help me dig him out!  Hurry!”

Eeee.

Big Bryan followed his orders, and so did Tellesco.

I looked over at Joey, and he nodded.  He said, “I can see, Weeee-ill!”  He ran up to the top of the little hole.

Well, fuck it.  I scrambled up the side of the hill from my own landing spot and all together, we left streaks in the wet sand from five points of a star, to the point at the top of the hill.

Water ran down from the top of the hill, from the well.

We had dug up something indeed.  But it was a breach birth.

We had to do us some digging again.

We pulled sand away from the top of the hill, and it was much easier this time to dig in the desert, because there was no wind, and the mud fell away and couldn’t get up into the air.

As we got down to the knee, Big Bryan stood up and grabbed that boot.  He put all his back into his bent knees and then he began to stand up straight and tall, as we kept right on digging, pulling mud away, and panicking.

It made no sense at all.

The Glinty said, “Faster!  Ain’t got much time!”

The boot in Big Bryan’s arms wriggled, and he let it go.

He stretched back and said, “Arrgh!  Cramping up!”

We dug down until we got to the waist of the upside-down figure in the well, and the cowboy preacher Glinty shouted.  ”Grab anything you can!  Get this boy out!”

I reached down and grabbed a boot.  Joey grabbed the other one.

We pulled, and them boots came right the hell off, and we tumbled down the hillside.

Tellesco knelt and wrapped his huge arms around one leg, and Big Bryan muckled right onto the other one. 

The Glinty reached in and grabbed ahold of the studded belt on them leather pants, and they all pulled at the same time.

Well, mister, the desert mud from the new well had not much give, and so it was all took.

They stood up at the same time and that fat bastard came out of the desert mud without his clothes on.

His leather came off and his shirt as well, stuck in the hole.

Tellesco and Big Bryan fell back with them leather pants, which tore apart as them two tumbled down the hill.

The Glinty had enough presence of mind to let go before he fell, and he grabbed the scrambling hand of the man who had chust been born breach out of the wet desert muck.

He dragged this large man out and fell back.

The man from the well coughed and gasped, and he tried to catch his breath.

His shaved head was the last thing to come out of the birth canal, and so his bright pink, wet mohawk stood straight up.

He sat on the top of the well hill, and he was a giant naked baby.

Fat Jerry had been borne of the desert in an ungraceful manner, and boy, was he angry.

He fucking roared in his fury.

Oh, shit.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

TFW CH 15 DIG DEEP

It was a sun-beaten walk to the top of the nearest foothill, and the saguaro cacti offered no shade.  The Glinty ghost-dude pointed to a small well that had been dug out of the desert hard-pan a long time ago.

He said, “We got some digging to do.  It don’t involve a shovel.”

Then he stalked down the ridge into the glen that held the well.

I looked over at the others and shrugged.

Joey the Lion Man shrugged back at me. 

Patrick Till-Bury looked around the hillside and said, “It’s best if we follow this man.  I don’t want to miss out on the rest of this odd dream.  I sure hope I awake soon, however.  I have to report back to work in the morning.”

Tellesco watched that old ghost cowboy walking off down the other side of the foot hill and said, “Maybe we should listen to this guy.  It could help Sean out…  Somehow.”

Big Bryan looked around at us and he said, “I’ve come this far. Might as well head to the end.”   Then he followed the Glinty.

Well, mister, that was enough for me.  I headed off after them two men.

Go It Alone   by Beck 

Excellent hand drawn animation by Ryan Guimond

The artesian well looked to have been dug and walled with great care, but it held no water.   I grabbed up a rock and tossed it in, and it only clinked around in the bottom, echoing up back at us.  Glinty shook his head.

He said, “We ain’t here for water, boy.  We here for some spark. Now listen here.  We gonna do some bad juju.  You boys gotta make yourself right with the Lawd before we do this.”

Bryan said, “I don’t go to church no more.”

Glinty said, “Ain’t no church that can help you here, my friend.  It’s more than that.  Ain’t nothing that’s been written in books here to show what it is.  This here be the Ugly.  It’s the real Ugly.”

Tellesco said, “Excuse me sir Mr. Glinty, but I don’t think that I’m up for this.”

Glinty smiled.  He said, “Young fella, you don’t yet know anything about what you can do.  Heights and depths, well, Mr. Man, they can only be gauged by a measure.  And you gotta measure by hand, in these parts.”

Tellesco only nodded, but it was obvious that he didn’t know what the hell that stuff meant.

Well, neither did I.  So I asked that ghost preacher, I said, “We hafta dig with our hands?  Why?  This old well here already been dug out.”

Bryan looked down into the well.  He said, “Yeah, this well goes down pretty far.  I can’t even make out the bottom of it.”

The Glinty chuckled.  He said, “Now don’t you worry about finding the rock bottom.  That lies ahead for us, and it will be pretty bad, and it will be quite soon.  Now all you boys get on your knees.”

Tellesco said, “We gonna pray now?”

Glinty roared with laughter.  He would have wiped the tears from his eye if he had any water left inside him.  He settled down a bit and said, “We gonna dig.”

He knelt down on the ground by the further side of the well, the eastern side of it, and shouted at us, “ Now get to it!”  Then he began to pull sand away.

Of course, when you dig in desert sand, it is not a productive thing to do.  More sand will slide in from the sides and fill the hole that you are trying to create.

Bryan went over and knelt beside the old preacher and dug at the same hole.

The Glinty sat back on his haunches and said to Bryan,  “No. Don’t dig here beside me.”

Hah?

What the fuck was this old crazy fucker doing? 

Bryan shook his head.  He said, “I ain’t fucking around here anymore.  This is bullshit.”

Patrick nodded.  He said,” We can’t be digging in different places to look for a single thing.  What, is this certain thing buried in pieces? What in thee hell are we trying to find?

The Glinty said, “We are not trying to dig up something.  We are trying to bury something.”

Hah?

I turned around.  Fuck this shit.  This made no sense.  A glimpse of my little sisters and my momma flashed in my head.

They’d been all alone in the valley-wide black-out the night before to fend for themselves, and they were in danger.  I fucking stepped away, turned on my heel and headed up the hill, back down to the old cabin on the other side.  I would figure out how to drive a large truck with a split-shift tranny.  I was going to go and protect my own.

Done.

The Glinty stood up and said, “Now you listen to me, you boys.  We ain’t digging up a thing.  We digging up nothing at all.”

Hah?

What the hell did that mean?

He said, “It takes faith here and now, but we can do it.  You see, this ain’t just a dried out desert.  There are things out here that make the truth.  But do ya know, the truth maybe ain’t what you been looking for.”

Tellesco set down on another side of the well and he began to dig.

The Glinty nodded.  He said, “Cup your hands, and toss the sand into that there well.”

Tellesco did as he was told, and the most of the sand fell down into the well, but some of it got blown away in the hint of a breeze that arose in the tiny valley.

Patrick said, “Aw, hell with it.  Let’s see about filling this cistern up. Odd dream as it is.  I’m in.”  

He knelt down across the well from the other two and cupped his hands in the desert sand, and he chucked the sand at the well.  Most of it fell against the side, and the rest of it got scattered by the breeze.  He dug in again and threw it better this time, and some of it made it down inside.

Bryan raised his eyebrows at me and I just shook my head.  He shook his head back at me, frowned, and knelt down across from the long-dead cowboy preacher.  He dug in and then threw his sand into the well.

In the rising wind,  Joey came over to me and said, “You thinking we done here?”

I said, “Yup.  Tossing sand in the wind.  Filling a mile-deep cavern.  I got better things to do with the daylight.”

He nodded.  He said, “Let’s go then.”

As we set off back to home, I heard Glinty say to them other poor souls, “We ain’t digging up a thing.  We raising up something.  We do it by filling this here empty well all the way back up to the brim so it overflows.”

Fuck that shit.  I had things that needed attending.

His was an effort of empty declarations and false promises.

Fill a well?

His church done let out for the likes of me.

 

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

Happy Valentine’s Day   by Billy Boy On Poison