The Fuckno Wars Ch 5 Deer Me

The Devil Takes Care Of His Own by Band Of Skulls

I followed them.  They led me along the corridor, and the hairs on the back of

my neck, my back, my ---

Well, let’s just say that I was not in for a good time.

Huh.

Their kind was now termed, “Okies,” because they had been poor farmers escaping the dust bowls of the heartland, and they were the first ones hailing from Oklahoma, to enter the Golden State of Califucknia during the Depression.

Well, the First Depression, that is.

Thus, they carried the most important things they had used during their hard lives.  These were spade-shovels, hoes, axes, hatchets, and other things that were portable.  They did not carry a team of horses or a tractor, nor any of the accoutrement that hooks up to a great amount of horse-power.  Accoutrement is a fancy French term that means, “shit that makes your life easier.”

They did not have an easy life, but they were not afraid of a little elbow grease.  That is what made them survivors, and that was the reason they were there with me in the corridor.

Those Okies wanted to take me to a room to meet a ghost.

And I wanted to bail.

Don’t look at me that way.  I was a frightened young American Indian transplant from an island in the middle of a huge river back east, who found himself alone in the desert, with a lot of angry dead folks shouting at me.  I just couldn’t hear them.

But they were crying dust now, and it made me sneeze.

Shit was all fucked up.

As I crept along the corridor, surrounded by them, I saw shadows scatter across the ceiling of this second-floor hallway from the light of the portable lamps erected upon the circular driveway to this mansion.  It gave me the willies.  Some bad folks had arrived, and they were coming in.

The old man ahead who disappeared from view each time he walked through one of the blades of light from each open door to the rooms on the front side, well, he stopped.

He pointed at a doorway on the other side of the hallway.

I felt the air grow colder.

I felt my skin begin to crawl.

I was not ready.

I slowed.  Then I heard the screech of boards as they were ripped away from the front entrance one floor below.  Now, you would think that such a thing would make you hurry, but I discovered something new.

I discovered why deer will act all paralyzed when they are facing your headlamps on your automobile.

This is why:

You encounter solid, impenetrable fear.  In this case, I did not want to meet some sort of great demon to which these blue ghosts were dragging me with their cold essence.

And I needed to get out, before the folks coming into the building would find me. Who know what they wanted to do to me?

And on the other hand, I had no where to go.  We three bastards had come here to find an answer, and it seemed to be beckoning to me from the door just ahead.  Tellesco was in the cellar now, and he could probably hear footsteps over his head.  He had his own fears to deal with, and you know that he was a bit of a scaredy cat.  But he had gone and done it.

It was this combination that made me freeze in my tracks:  It was the instinctual fear I had of what lay ahead, and it was the mental fear knowing that if I didn’t go ahead, all would be lost.  

Ya know?

Here are some things to remember when you see a deer in the headlights:

Do not honk your horn.  That will make a deer go left and right and left and right.  Deer do not understand what horns mean.  It makes them stop to think about their lives and the problems they have caused.

Do not flash your headlamps hi and lo and hi and lo.  That simply alerts them that they should stand still.

Never drive into the woods or rocks.  You have a much better chance of surviving an impact with a soft deer than rocks and tree trunks.

Instead, aim to drive around the ass end.  If it’s a male, there might be antlers, and the other end is moving away from your trajectory unless you spook it.  If you hit it's ass end, you have a better chance of surviving than if the front end of the deer comes in through the windshield.  The front end has more bones and mass.

Never, ever swerve and brake at the same time, baby.

So I swerved and braked. 



I swung around.  Fuck ghosts.  I hate them.  I ran away like a scared little bitch, and I could not get away fast enough.

At that same moment, I heard a holler from below.

And then there was some shouting.  As I ran past the little hole I could not see, from which I had crawled through, I fell in my panicked state onto the floor.

I was like a fucking spooked deer in the headlights, but I was in the dark.

I had the creepy crawlies all over me, and I scrambled around on my hands and knees, feeling along the soggy wallpaper for my exit.  I saw light shining in from the front windows, and I headed to the nearest one.  I was going to go out, fuck this shit, head for the light. 

Like a deer.

Well, do you know, all sorts of glowing farming tools came blasting at me and then there were angry dead people’s faces in my face, and they were shouting.  Boy were they pissed off at me.

I fell onto my back and then they did something odd.

They all gathered around me and made a grab for my arms.  They faded almost from view, and they fucking dragged me down the corridor.  Their ice cold hands made my damp jacket crackle with ice.

Never piss off a ghost, huh?  Never piss of a herd of them.  I had no idea that ghosts could get pissed off enough to cause things to happen.  Neither did Tellesco.  He had told me that they couldn’t hurt me.  But perhaps they could do such things.

They let me go in front of a doorway and I rolled over to run away again.

I saw a white glow from inside the doorway, from the corner of my eye.  Never look in a darkened room when you see a glow.  Never leave the bedroom door open to a darkened hallway when you are going to sleep, in case a pale face peeks in upon you.  Close up your closet door each night as well.  These are portals.

I looked in, and I saw Lorelei.

I felt my legs buckle.

She was right there, standing inside the pitch black room.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or shit myself.

Another Perfect Catastrophe by Dana Leong

See you on the weekend for the Escape, and how we would do it, my friend.  Tellesco was in the cellar, and you never leave a man behind. 

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

Another Perfect Catastrophe by Dana Leong

The Fuckno Wars Ch 4 Feeling Blue

Haunted Heart by Little Hurricane

The blue faces crowded around Tellesco and looked at me.  He said, “We can’t leave them here.  We have to take them with us.”

I shook my head.  I said, “The car won’t fit them all.”

Boy, did that piss them off.  They charged at me, throwing pitch forks, hoes, other gardening, I mean, farming equipment at me, and also axes and hatches.

I ducked, even though those things flew through me. 

They couldn’t hurt me.

Tellesco shouted, he did.  He said, “Stop!  We won’t be leaving anyone behind!  Chill the fuck out!”

I was amazed.  Dude had grown some balls, I guess.  I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here then.  What you waiting for?”

Tellesco pointed at the little girl with the wilted flowers in her hands and missing eyes.  At least she hadn’t thrown those at me.  He said, “She wants me to follow her to the basement.  And there is something else we have to see up on the top floors.  We don’t have much time.”

I shrugged.  “So you are saying that I have to go up?”

Tellesco nodded.  He said, “I will go down.  We have to hurry, and meet back here.  Them purple robes are outside now.”

Wha?   Fuck.  Mind you, I still could not shake off the shivers, the heebie jeebies.  Ghosts are old recordings from the past.  They are not real.  But then again, they were mad at me there in that old library, and they would not let me rest in peace until I followed them instead of escaping and running away.

Sometimes, you have to up and go down.  Sometimes, you have to enter to exit. 

Ya know?

Evidently, in order for the ghosts to escape and follow us, we needed to collect come things, from the top floors and from the cellar.  Go figure.  Ghosts are whiny bitches.  I also didn’t know that a certain ghost waited upstairs for me.  She was one of two ladies that I had a connection to in this fucked up tale, and both of them were dead.

They were both ghosts.

I just didn’t know it yet.

Good times. 

Fuck.

See you next time.

Just kidding.  You know me.

I got up from the floor in front of the window (I’d ducked from the various farming tools chucked at me from them blue folks) and took a deep breath.  It smelled like a root cellar.  It smelled like dirt from a cemetery.  I shrugged the shivers off me, from under my damp leather jacket, and adjusted my tie.  I stuck my jaw out and forced a smile.  I bent and grabbed the torch light from the floor and handed it to Tellesco.  I said, “There prolly ain’t no lights down in the cellar.  Here.”

His eyes began to weep again, and I just smiled.  Inside, I was dying.  I did not want to be in that place any longer.  But where else were there any answers for me? 

Kinda fucked, you know.

Tellesco accepted the flashlight and said, “You need to get to the floor right above us .  She’s waiting there for you.”

Well fuck him.  He just set my skin creepy crawling again.  I shivered and said, “Who?”

He nodded.  “It’s that pretty girl with the white hair.  She been leading us here. She’s so pretty.  But she wants to talk to you, not me.”  He began to weep again.  What a crying little huge bitch-man.  

I said, “A name?  Can I get a name?”

He just shook his head and held out his free hand.  The little ghost girl put her hand into his and then they went out the door.  He went on his way all blubbering like a water fountain, shoulders heaving and nose dripping.

Fuck.

I did not want to look at any of them blue faces crowing about me.  I felt their presence.  It was like the cold breath from a freshly dug grave.  But I did.

They all held their farming tools, their digging tools in their hands again.  Well, that was not exactly reassuring.  I didn’t want them to try to hit me with those implements again.  But they did something odd.  They turned around and walked out the door.

I was left alone in the library.  I thought about turning tail again, and running off with the little Lion Man and escaping.  But didn’t.  Fuck me.

I followed them, and they led the way.

We went down the long corridor, heading to the eastern wing of the huge mansion, and lights gleamed from the front, where the huge foyer awaited.  Before we got to it, the blue ghosts stopped in front of a wall and beckoned me.  I came up to them and they parted.  The old dude in the overalls pointed his pitch fork at the wall.  I looked at it, and then I understood.  It was another one of them hidden panels, or some shit.

I pressed against where he indicated, and the wall clicked.  It popped back out into the corridor, and then those ghosts glided through the wall and disappeared. I pulled the door open and it was pitch black inside.  The  a blue face peeked down at me from beyond a turn in the stairs, from up above.  I nearly shit myself.  I would never get used to seeing ghosts, I guess.

So there were stairs leading upwards, like in the other end of the mansion, when the tower came down, if you recall.  In that other one, it seemed like me and the little Lion Man were stuck in there for three weeks, my friend.

The ghost came back down around the corner of them stairs, and do you know, I could see the steps from the weak, blue light of his glow.   He said something over his shoulder, and then there were ghosts all around me.

Now I could see the walls, the slanted ceiling leading up, and the steps before me.  I ignored their smell of death and their cold presence.  No way to go but up, baby.  Fuck it, I thought.  Might as well go along for the ride.

Of course, that had always been my downfall.  Why stop now?   Get up and go down.

Leaving The Nest by Benjy Ferree

I climbed the stairs and reached an old door.  Its knob was set like a nail.  It wouldn’t twist. I pushed on it, and it clicked open.  The ghosts faded through the door and left me in the dark.  I resisted the urge to open the door and charge on through, because I had learned my lesson.  I gripped the door knob and did not let go.  I stepped back, in the pitch black, and pulled it open.  I pressed my other hand forward and felt.

Yup.

There was a wall in front of me.  Fucking ghosts wanted to make me smack my face and fall backwards, for a good laugh.  Bastards.

Then a blue face appeared right in front of me and jumped the hell out of me.  I fell back, heading toward the stairs below in the darkness, but I still held onto the doorknob.  I caught myself from falling, but the twist of my shoulder as I held on, now facing downward into the abyss, well, it wrenched my shoulder.

I almost got a dislocated shoulder, but it fucking hurt.

I steadied myself on the stairs and let go of the knob.  More ghosts came into the empty stairwell, and I was pissed off.  Bastards.  I screamed, “Fuck You!  You left me!  You got me hurt!”

Well, I don’t know about you, but when you see a bunch of dead people get all sad and apologetic, it is not much help.  It will creep you out.

You see, there were tears, but it came out of their eyes like powdery dust.

It made me sneeze.

I could taste it.

It tasted like a rotten turnip.

I was tasting ghost.

Blecch.

I saw the doorknob now quite well in the glow of their blue luminescence, and I grabbed it with the other hand, and faced the other way.  I had my back to the doorway, and I used my Docs to kick away the old wooden slats that held gypsum, and busted that wall apart.  The years of wallpaper covering the other side of the covered-over wall were still soggy from the baptism of the once-lovingly-adorned mansion, and I pushed my boot through.

I squeezed through the soggy opening like a new born, and rolled onto the hallway floor.  Them ghosts crowded around me and tried to help me up, but they couldn’t.  They were images, not artifacts.  Artifacts were what I needed to collect, in order to help them leave that fucked up place.

I looked down the hallway and saw the light from the portable streetlamps out front, shining in from the blown out windows of the rooms on one side.  They made curious shadows on the ceiling.

I grimaced.  My shoulder hurt like a mutha fucka.  Now they wanted me to do what?

Bastards.

I hate ghosts.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

The Fuckno Wars (Beta)

There are a few considerations to make.  You choose.  Yeah, do my job for me.  Thanks, honey.

You see, it is my intention to write well, and by having a deadline, well, this thing forces me to take time out of my work (paying job as an air quality scientist for my tribe) to attempt to do my best.

You are in for the ride.


The internet should remain free (other than the fee to me from my service provider for getting online), but I will gladly "pay" attention to your ads, if they are unobtrusive (no pop-ups, pop-unders, nor trojans) only if you have some genuine and well-crafted product I wish to see.


You see, I have fifteen or even thirty seconds of spare time to spend in viewing your advertisement in order to experience what you have contributed to our excellent internet, created by the Mighty USA for the world to use.

As long as you have something good to view.

Otherwise, g'bye, baby.  Long may you prosper in someone else's cache dump.


It is proper for we, the USA consumerists, to afford a few moments for the viewing of a finely crafted, enjoyable advertisement for you wares, of which I may decide to purchase.


That is proper, in this new world of global capitalism.



Anything to keep the "internets" free to surf, baby.



 Let's delve into my own stuff, free for you.   But do not steal my stuff, or I will come looking for you.  That wouldn't be a good thing.


That being said, here we go:

TUNES

Pick Two, or offer two of your own.

Powerman, by The kinks.

I Can get To Heaven, by Jes, mixed by Myon. 

Hate To Say I Told You So, by The Hives

Colorblind, by Counting Crows

VERSION ONE

Hello there.

Now, many of you have been asking about some back story for this tale.  I understand.  It’s a long tale, and it originates from my past.

I  order to appease you, before we begin the description of the destruction of the Megalopolis of Fuckno, and then, after that happens, its reconstruction, perhaps we should take a moment to explore the cast of characters that figure in this tale.

You ask, and I deliver.

Who were the ghosts?

Who were my friends?

Who became the Punkologists?

Who were the Walk-Ins?  

Who were the Purple Robes?

Who am I?

Will this ever end?

My answer is this:   You have been reading a story in construction, and while it has been all mapped out, nonetheless, it takes a lot for an old punk to pull it out of his old, addled head.

You are in for the ride.

I write for one reason.

I simply can’t help myself.   But you know by now that I am fiercely protective of my tribe.

So, let’s explore the cast of characters, one at a time, shall we?  This will be fun.

Should we start with the ghosts?

Let me know.


t d c willies (at) g m a i l or something closer than that, botbaby.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

If ghosts, then it would start like the following.  But it's up to you.

VERSION TWO

Katheena was a ghost now.

So was Lorelei.

I had not seen either, but I saw a bunch of them in the empty library.




...

The Fuckno Wars Ch 3 Ghost Love

Sex With Ghosts, or Sentimientos, by Ernesto Romeo

There were ghosts here, and there were purple robes on their way.

There were Walkins arriving into the city, and there were poor souls leaving.

It was a time of flux, of entropy.

Perfect entropy will exist one day with the dissipation of energy until it is equal across the universe, and all matter has dissolved from purity into a mixture.  All action and being will cease to be, for each individual singularity.  All will be one, in a mass of singularity, stretching off into eternity.

That is quantum mechanics for you.  Have a nice day.

This is to where we were heading.

The flashlight hurt my eyes, and I kicked it away.

Now was all darkness, and Joey couldn’t see. 

But of we three, two could see.

One with tears, and the other with a head wound. 

Salt water and blood. 

Clear and salty; salty and metallic.

White and Red.

The silent voices screamed in our faces in the dark.  They were wisps of human emotion, looming blue in the shadows.  They pointed to our left, as we drew back from their anger in the empty library.  They pointed to the east, you see.

Red, white, and blue will never fade.

They were pointing to a lost deposit of books, stuffed among empty beer cans in a secret compartment behind the rear seat of a once-lovely golden car with gold tinted windows that was now buried in the desert. 

We had no clue.

They were pointing at Orion, drowned and buried in the desert.

Katheena’s car had dug out the tar from the road as it screamed forth, and she had sacrificed her automobile for some reason.  Her car held those books that made the Purple Robes come speeding back to this mansion, baptized in the desert. 

Katheena had sacrificed her life.

The lost souls wanted payback for their own loss, and they were shouting.

We simply couldn’t hear them.

+++   +++   +++   +++   +++   +++  

Joey swung his light around.  He said, “Ain’t no one here.  Why you bitches whimpering!”  He was pissed off.

Tellesco, I mean No One, well, he grabbed that torch from Joey’s hand and pushed that little Messican boy to the floor.  He said, “ENOUGH!”

He shined the light onto the old man who stood there with a pick-axe in his hand and said, “You telling me you don’t see this sad bastard?!”

Joey scrambled up and got in Tellesco’s face.  He said, “You ain’t making a lot of sense here, big boy.  Next time you knock me down, I’ll shove that fucking flashlight into your ass without lube!”

Tellesco shined the light onto another ghost, and she was lower to the floor.  She held wilted flowers in her hand.  He said, “You don’t see this girl here with the missing eyes?”

Lion Man, I mean, Joey, he said, “Fuck you two.  Time to bail.  Weeee-ill said leave no man behind, but you fuckers are out of reach.”  He went to the plywood board and pushed it out, and then he slipped through.

The ghosts crowded us.  I rubbed my eyes, but they would not disappear.  Fuck it.  I turned tail and went for the plywood escape. The board was heavy, but my fright was deeper.  I slid down outside, and got held up on the nail heads at the sill.  My leather was caught.  Always mind your leather, baby.

Tellesco howled from inside.  He fucking howled.  He said, “We Can’t Leave Them Here!” 

I found Joey in the starlight, and the side of his face glowed red in the rose slit of moonlight.  He was half red.  I said, “Joseph, we will not leave him behind.  That’s not part of the deal.”

Joey looked over to the horse corral beyond, and then he looked at me.  He said, “What deal?  I didn’t make any deal!”

I said, “Shhh! Don’t be so loud.  Now listen.  There are three of us.  We are all we have!  Our deal is a pact.  It was a pact we made when the tower came down.  We are together in this, and we will not leave one of us behind!”

Joey wanted to run.  I could see it in his eyes.  He wanted to bail, and I couldn’t blame him.  I wanted to bail as well.  It would be easy to escape.  It was the easy way out.  But do you know, the right thing to do is not usually the easiest thing to do.

The right thing is the hardest thing to do.

Joey looked up into my face and he said, “I fucking hate you right now.  I can’t do this.”

Well that hurt.  But do you know, that is the rock bottom.  Shit happens.  You find your rock bottom, and then you try to dig your way out of a hole.  I watched him run off, and I didn’t say a fucking thing.  Someday, he would rue this moment, and I hoped it would be soon.

I hoped that he would live to see another day.  I knew that we did not have much time left here on this mortal plane.  Call it instinct.

Suga Momma by John Lee Hooker

I turned around, and my stomach gurgled.  I had the willies.  I did not want to crawl back inside, and see the blue faces.  I did not want to be in that hellhole.  I did not want to go forth, go west.  I wanted to head east, to the island of my nativity.

Well, fuck it, I thought.  Gonna die anyway, someday.  Might as well be for something good.  For once.

I pulled the board back and saw Tellesco in the middle of the room, and he had dropped the flashlight on the floor.  He didn’t need it to see the blue wisps all about him.  They were all laying their hands upon him.

I don’t know about you, but that is something I wouldn’t enjoy.  I didn’t want to be touched by anyone, never mind some dead folks. 

Rrrrgh.  That is the sound I made in my throat.  It is the sound you make when you have to enter a crawl space under a home that is infested with cockroaches, and they will crawl all over you, looking for a hiding place, and if you haven’t taped up the sleeves to your coverall suit well enough, they will crawl inside and along your arms down to your private areas.

It tickles.

Rrrrgh.   I crawled inside the library, under the plywood cover.  Rrrrgh.  Fuck.  Rrrrgh.

Tellesco turned around and saw me, and he began to cry.  Sad bastard.  He said, “I knew you wouldn’t bail on me Mr. Will!”

The hollow faces turned from him and they looked at me.  Just what I needed.  My skin crawled.  I saw a withered woman with no hands reach toward me.  A man wearing faded overalls who carried a pitchfork knelt down and tried to help me up, but he was a dusty photograph, cut out and taped up over the surface of reality.  I clamped my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see them anymore.

It did not help.   I felt the touch of a ghost on my arm.  I swung it off, and hollered, “Don’t fucking touch me!”

Tellesco stepped back.  It was he who had touched me.  He said, “Mr. Will, they can’t touch you!  They can’t even say anything to us!  They can’t hurt you.”

I didn’t need him to say that, because if I did, I would have been a weak man.  But it helped.

I opened my eyes and shook the shivers off.  I said, “Rrrrrgh.  Tell them to get away from me.”

I looked around the room.  Them ghosts stood back.  Well that was something.  At least they could hear me.  But anyways, Rrrrgh.  I couldn’t get rid of the creepy crawlies.  Blecch.

I said, “Tellesco, what the fuck is going on here?!”

He smiled.

Great.  No One had a clue.

Freedom at 21 by Jack White

He said, “Mr. Will, they trying to tell us something.  This little girl here keeps trying to get me go out of this room.  I dunno.  I think I should follow her.”

I sat on the sill of the busted out window, back to the plywood that hanged over it.  I said, “What about that ghost chick you been following?  Where is she?  She been talking to you, right?”

Tellesco nodded.  “She says that these folks knew we were coming.  She says that they don’t think you know your power. She’s waiting upstairs for us.”

I had no fucking clue.  I said, “We supposed to follow that little girl there?”

Tellesco said, “Nope.  This one wants me to go somewhere else. Downstairs, to the cellar.”

I said, “What about them Purple Robes?”

Tellesco said, “Oh, them?  They just got here.  They outside now.”

Hah?

Fuck.

Fuck.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

Fuckno Wars Chapter 2 Hello Can You

This is the first part of Chapter 2.

I apologize for the missing week, but I had some bodies to bury, and others to raise up.

Now Listen:

Blood Is Thicker Than Water, by Black Label Society

In a darkened room, do Walkins make noise?

No.

I wiped my eyes again.  Nothing would erase from my eyes the pale blue faces staring at me in the pitch black room.  Joey (I mean, Lion Man) shined his flashlight on the floor as he walked out from the empty stacks of books.

He was bookless.

The back of my head throbbed, and Tellesco (I mean, No One) took the bloody t-shirt away from the mess on the back of my head.

Guess I was done bleeding.  Gobless him.

Joey shined his flashlight all around on the walls and ceiling and said, “You two are fucking crazy.  Ain’t no one here.”

Tellesco said, “Except for me and you, and Mr. Will here.  OK.  I get it.  Now help me with Mr. Will.”

Joey said, “I’ll help you two get the fuck out of here.  This was a bad idea.  We done.  Weeeeee-ill needs help.  I won’t risk him.”

+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++

Big Bryan was not alone as he made his way to the hell-hole of a burned ranch.  

She smelled like the Joshua Tree flower, when it blooms in the spring rains.


She whispered in his ear.



"Sssssshhhhhh.  It will all make senssssssse."

It gave him the shivers.

+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++

Down on the south side of Fuckno, a Walk-In finished eating his late night meal.   It was not a meal that you might enjoy.  He felt full from an evening of various choices.

That particular epicurean gastronomosity involved the ears of one who was now earless, and also dead.

The scent of his breath as he burped was not something that anyone should ever experience.

He waited, and he was rewarded:  Seen heard some new things.

He heard some whispers.


"I'll pay you tomorrow, honest!"



"What the fuck happened to my rock?  What the fuck!  Did you smoke it?!"




"I'll do it, I'll do it.  Hand me the knife.  Just smoke me up now."

You hear, those voices echoed down the alleys of avenues and side streets.

Groan from a bruising,



plead for help,




beg for another front,




promise your life away...






Perhaps someone will hear you.

Seen smiled and wiped his mouth on the back of his gloved hand, and he arose.

How many bodies now, five?






There were five who watched him as he did things to their bodies that they could no longer feel.




They needed to get back in their body,



a body,



anybody.

This was how the Walk-In built an army of Walk-Ins.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

To Be Rewritten- Fuckno Wars C1 P3 Ghosts

Get Your Body, by Baby

I ran on my knees past No One toward the window.  Fuck ghosts.  I was done.  I pressed the plywood away and clawed my way out of the hole like a newborn spawn from the gaping maw of hell.  I fell out of the window onto the patio bricks and heard that sharp, loud smack against the back of my head that hurts so bad you can smell it and taste it.  I felt the world tilt away from me, and I slid of its plane into a starless eternity.

I saw a tunnel of white light that grew brighter, and heard the sounds of voices in my head, but the words were all jumbled.  And then the light hurt my eyes and I reached up and pushed it away.  Fuck that flashlight.

I rolled over and rubbed my eyes.  My head ached big time.  What the hell was going on?

Someone said, “Holy shit, he’s bleeding from the back of his head!”

No One said, “I should have left him outside!  But you made me push him up over the window hole and set him down in here!”

The response was this:  “We can’t be caught now, with him injured!  At least he ain’t got no broken back…  Fuck.  I should have thought about that before I-  Wait!  He’s saying something!  What is it, Weeeee-ill?”

I turned my head and said, “You fuckers are assholes.”

Lion Man and No One laughed in relief.

Lion Man pressed his T-shirt against the back of my head to slow the bleeding, and No One felt so bad for my injury that he began to cry.  He said, “Mr. Will, I didn’t mean you no harm.  But you took off after I fell on you.  I shoulda grabbed you before you went out the window.  I’m sorry man.”

I sat up and my head spinned a bit.  I said, “I’ll be OK.  But who are all of these folks in here?”

Lion Man whipped around and flashed the light everywhere.  He saw nothing.

No One said, “They don’t say anything, but their mouths are moving, like they got something important to say.  Some look like they are hollering at us. You see that?”

Lion Man looked at me and twirled his finger in a circle near his temple, and he whistled.

I said, “Yeah.  That one over there is pointing at those shelves.”

Lion Man swung the light back around.  He said, “You both are off your fucking rockers.  Ain’t no one here.  Damn.  Guess I’m the only sane person here. What will a boy do?”

No One got up and jostled through the crowd in the room over to where the pale figure was pointing.  He shrugged.  He said, “Ain’t nothing here.”

All of the faces turned to look at him when he said this, and then they looked at each other.  It seemed like they could see things that we could not.  They could see books on shelves that weren’t there anymore.  The books had been salvaged and taken away.  Some had been stolen before that happened.

You see, the thing about ghosts are that they are faint wisps of human essence.  They are the images played from strong emotion etched and recorded into the nearby organic materials from when the intense experience first occurred.  A ghost is not a person, but it is instead a remnant.  Strong emotions that are evoked from a powerful emotional event in our lives, such as a wedding, a sexual act, a violent death, or a period of mental anguish or physical torture have the capacity to invade the molecular structure of wood, of cloth, and even into the detritus of the living creatures which cover every surface of our planet, even on your own skin this moment.

We are all connected, you know.  Emotions are recorded into anything that has carbon molecules in it.

Perhaps it takes the act of opening your eyes to see those recordings.

I rubbed my eyes, but it did not erase these ghosts that filled the room.

My fear was gone, probably because I was stunned from my head wound, and I was most likely in a state of shock.

(To Be Re-Written)

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The Fuckno Wars C1 P2 Books

You will find yourself at the bottom of a hole someday. 

We all will.

If you had the opportunity to escape, would you take it?

No Glory In This Story, by Lhasa de Sela.  Thank you Lisa for this find.

The Fuckno Wars

Chapter One

Part Two

Books

We stood at the fence of the horse corral and we were at the lowest point of our lives.

I shivered in my leather jacket.  It was still wet from having dived into an algae ridden pool, trying to drown another jacket, the one that No One wore.  The only other thing he wore was a knitted kilt.

No One said, “They are afraid of you. She says that they do not know your power.  She says they think that you don’t either.”

Hah?

Power?   I had no idea what the hell he was saying.  I thought that he didn’t either.  He’d said that he was talking to a ghost girl, you know.

“She says that because you destroyed this place and took some books they been looking for, that you are a threat.”

Books?

What the fuck?

The books, you recall, were in the back of Katheena’s golden car, Phoenix, buried in the desert silt up to its neck.  But we had no clue about those books at all.

The Lion Man shook his head and whistled a long, descending note.  He said, “Wow.  That electric fence really fucked you up, dude.  You better sit down and take a breather.”

No One shook his own head.  He said, “We ain’t got time for a breather.  They on their way here now.”

I looked at the Lion Man.  “They’re not here now?  Well fuck it.  Let’s go!”

He nodded, and we climbed over the corral fence and crept towards the destroyed mansion.  We would have no other chance to do such a thing.  We didn’t know what we would find.  Maybe we would find nothing.  That would be awful.  All this for nothing and then hell to pay come daylight. 

If we weren’t careful and quiet, and quick about it, hell would come much sooner.

We snuck up to a small shed near the closest side of the mansion.  I peeked around the corner of it, and I could hear the hum of a diesel generator out front.  A jenny.  One for electrical power.

I looked over to the car that was parked sideways across the driveway entrance.  It was lit from the bright lights that shined from a couple of portable streetlamps set up closer to the front entrance.  I saw a glow from a red cherry inside that vehicle that brightened and shined on a man’s face as he sucked on his cigarette.  Then it died down, and in a bit, an exhale of smoke puffed out the driver’s side window.  That single pause indicated that he was relaxed.  He was not smoking fast. 

This meant that he was unaware; he had not been told anything by the owners of this place.  It also meant that No One was full of shit.  He must have been delusional.  The Purple Robes knew that we were here?  They were on their way?  Yeah, right. Good one, No One.

I turned back to the other two and smiled.  “Time is on our side, fellas.  We safe.  Now let’s get to the rear and see if there are any open windows.  And for the love of gawd, be fucking quiet.”

They followed my lead.  We had a good nine or so hours until daylight.  We would be gone long before then.  Our eyes adjusted to the dim light from the stars overhead, and we began to make sense of the destruction of the place.  All of the windows were blown out, except in the corners, all the way up to the top floor.  Each of the windows on the ground floor were boarded up with plywood sheets.  Lights glinted from windows here and there on the floors above.  They must have set up some sort of temporary lighting system inside.  It would have been dangerous to try to get the electricity started for this whole place with all of the water damage and busted walls.  On the ground in the back, we stepped over broken furniture that had been flushed from the windows when the water tower tipped over and crashed through the roof into the top floor and released its contents inside.

Baptism.

Certainly, anything that was of value had been salvaged from the grounds, as well as the interior of the place.  We were not looking to steal for monetary gain.  We were looking for information, for data, for a single fucking clue.  I wondered if there might be a room with satanic materials in it.  No, not pentagrams on the floor from a melted black candle, or dead cats and chickens laying about in the corners, or goat heads hanging from the rafters with twine.  There would be no giant black cauldron with bat wings and lizard tongues stewing in it.  That shit belonged in a kid’s ghost story, or a B Movie.  

Yet,

There must be something.

Anything at all would do.

We slipped past the pool area, and found that the whole back yard was paved with patio stones as we went along.  I avoided the long swimming pool.  I did not have much luck with them, you know.

We came to an area with metal patio furniture strewn about, and I stopped.  This would do.

I looked around on the rear patio for an iron leg of a patio chair or the brass neck of a flushed-out lamp to pry one of the plywood sheets from a window, and as I did,  I heard the sound of wood splintering and popping.  I turned around and saw that No One had a good hold on a corner of one of those sheets and he was using his raw strength to pull it away. The ply wood was not all that thick, but they must have been secured with ten-penny framing nails and those were deep in the window jacks on each side.   The sheet gave way before the nails would come out.  It came away easier and easier until there was only the single line of nails across the top.  It just hung there.  He tried to wiggle the sheet to get the last part away from the wall.

I had an idea.  I ran over and yanked on his arm to stop him.  I said, “Hey, wait!”

He stopped, and he wasn’t even breathing hard for all his effort.  He said, “What, Mr. Will?  I can get this thing down.”

I said, “Leave it.  It’s like a hinge up there.  If anyone comes around to check out the back yard, it won’t be obvious that we went through this here window.”

He let the plywood sheet drop back down and it hung there.  He turned back to me and smiled.  He said. “I think all the nails popped through on the rest of it.  Hopefully there ain’t any sticking out of it, or one of us could get hurt.”

I turned back to Lion Man and said, “You still got that flashlight?”

He came over and handed it to me.  He said, “Well duhhh.  Of course I do.”

I cupped my hand over the head and flicked it on.  I let a small slit of light shine through my fingers and examined the sheet from the inside.  He was right.  The nails were not set in a straight line.  They were sporadic. Some of them had not hit any wooden studs at all, and they stuck out of the plywood the sides.  It looked like a rookie had set the nails in this sheet. 

I said, “Come look up inside at this shit.  We have to be careful of the sides when we go in and then when we come back out through here.  Those few nails on each side will fuck someone up if we’re not careful.”  All of the nails on the bottom of the board had popped through it, because they were set solid into the wide sill, and there they remained.  The nails at the top in the header must have found good footing as well.

I cast the slit of light around inside the room to see what was inside.  It was quite odd in there.  There were aisles of shelves for books.  It was a library.  But there no books anymore.  I cast the light to the left, and saw knocked over tables and easy chairs, and on the right, more aisles of shelves. Odd indeed.

I turned back to the other two and said, “All right, fuckers.  We go in.  Now hold this sheet away from me.”  No One did, and I flicked the flashlight off and handed it back to Lion Man.  Then I climbed in and fell to the floor.  For some reason, No One let the board back down, and I heard them arguing outside about who would go in next. 

“Fuck you, I’m next!”

“No, Joseph, I don’t want to get hurt by them nails!”

In the library, it was quiet.  I could hear water dripping in the walls.  I could hear a field mouse squeaking.  It was probably pissed at someone invading his new home.  And then I heard a hint of a whisper.  It said, “Ssssshhhhhhh….”

My skin crawled. My eyes got damp with terror.  I was not alone.  I scrambled over to the board and pushed it back out.  I wanted to get the fuck out.  Someone was right behind me.  I said, “Joseph!  Give me the flashlight!”

He turned from No One and handed me the light.  “You Ok?  You look like you seen a gh---.”

I grabbed it from him, swung around, and flicked the light on.  I saw a dim white face slip behind one of the stacks.  I wanted to get the fuck out and I dropped the light.  Lion Man crawled in from under the board and I backed into him as I panicked. 

The light rolled away and shined on the walls as it circled about.  There were other white faces shining in this room. They were coming in through the walls.

Lion Man said, “Ow!  Weeee-ill!  What the fuck you doing?”

He fell inside against me and I was paralyzed with fear.  I said, “We need to get the fuck out.  NOW!”

I crawled past him as he went for the flashlight.  He grabbed it just as No One was coming in and he smacked me in the top of my head with his face.   He said, “OW!  Mr. Will, you just hit me on my face bruise!”

Then he fell on top of me and I could not move. I squirmed as he pulled his legs in and I could not breathe.  Maybe it was my fear, maybe it was his solid mass, but I was fully in panic mode and I was stuck.  Time to bail, time to visit the parole agent, time to get a job in the sunshine and forget about things that were not in my world.

My eyes streamed liquid, in my terrified state.  I punched at No One and tried to catch my breath, struggling to get the big brute off of me.

Lion Man stood up and swung the light around.  He said, “Huh.  Looks like some kind of library.”  Then he shined the light in my face, and I was blinded. 

No One stood up, and he said, “I’m sorry Mr. Will.  You Ok?  Hey, who are all these people?”

Fuck that shit.

I was on my way out.

See you on Saturday for the next part.  It will be quite long, my friend.

God Help You.  God Help Us All.

---willies out.

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