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Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Fuckno Wars CH 19 Katheena Returns




I did not know about anything that was happening on the south end of that awful city.

I didn’t know anything at all.

But I began to learn.







Too Late   by John Hiatt





Lorelei led me into the hallway and grabbed my hand in her icy grip.  She pulled me along to the next entrance, and I stumbled.  The sounds of boots upon floor rumbled along the hallway from both ends, and they were coming closer.  Those purple robes knew the entrance to their chapel.   They were coming for me.  They didn’t know about Lorelei.

They didn’t know about Tellesco’s blue army.


They didn’t know anything.


Either.








THE

RETURN

OF

KATHEENA







Lorelei grabbed my hand again and pulled me up.  She dragged me along and then when we got to the place in the wall from which I’d busted through earlier, she slammed me into that hole and I thrusted deep.  I tumbled a bit and stopped sliding.  She put her hand over my mouth to stop my moans and then them boots went by. I heard the loud whispers of angry, panicked conversation as them purple robes met from both ends at the middle, and she pointed further down the stairs upon which I lied upside down.


I looked down, into the darkness, and I trusted.


Quietly, stealthily, secretly, I turned and got onto my hands and knees.  I shook my head to get her cold hand from my mouth.  My lips tasted like saltwater.

She went down the stairs, winding to the left, and I followed on my hands and knees.  You see, the old desert-dried wooden steps might not creak if my weight was dispersed across four limbs instead of two.  When you crawl, three limbs is the least weight.  When you walk, all of your weight will be on one limb for the next step.  It’s like being on broken ice.  Always crawl when you are about to fall through into the water.


I crawled down, and I could smell the dust of a hundred years rising up from my palms, but I was careful not to let my boots drag across the steps above, behind me.  I was prostrate, hands and knees, like in a church, sprawled for my confirmation.


It was a church in reverse, upside down; beautiful on the outside, but ugly within.


We reached the room that would lead to the hallway, and the library behind another door, beyond.


We did not know it, but Tellesco was coming up from the cellar with his army of blue ghosts.


I rose up and wiped my hands on my pants and Lorelei looked back at me and put her finger to her lips.  “Shhhhhhh….  Someone is here.”



I nodded. I whispered, “Yeah, them purple robes are gonna be coming along in a minute. Let’s go!”


She shook her head.  She said, “It’s Her.”




I felt the shivers.   I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but the way she said it made me feel like the broken china splinters and crystal goblet shards in the bag I’d left in the hidden stairwell behind me.


She turned back at the hallway before us, out the open door, and then we heard a chorus of loud shouts.  They were hollering this: “Onward To The West!  Onward To The New Life!”

It shook the old, water-torn mansion to the foundations.  The loud smack of a cellar door being kicked open and slammed against the wall echoed throughout the hallway beyond, and then the chorus of fealty filled the first floor with energy.


I peeked around the edge of the doorway, down the hall, and saw Tellesco come stomping along with a little girl on his back.  He had tears streaming down over a big shit-eating grin on his muddy face.


What the fuck was going on?


He saw my face and shouted, “Mr. Will!  Let’s get the heck out of here!”


Well, I don’t know about you, but that was the best fucking idea I’d heard all night.


The rumbly-bumpity sound of boots upon floor echoed down each end of this hallway, and they were joined by the ones climbing up from the huge front entrance alcove which held the grand staircase and the ballroom off to the side.


Them purple robes were coming for us.


I looked past Tellesco and saw a bright blue line of ghosts filing out of the door to the cellar behind him and I about shit my pants.



They were in various states of decay and murdered-ness, and Tellesco didn’t even seem to mind that shit.


But it gave me the fucking willies. I hate ghosts.



I held back and wanted to turn tail, but Lorelei’s ghost grabbed me by the leather and yanked me straight up.  She looked me in the eyes.  She said, “It’s now or never.  You have to do this.  This is your only chance.”



Holy fuck.  



I felt weak at the knees because I was a weak bastard.



Lorelei said, “Keep your trust.”



It helped a little, but not much.



I got back up, but my tie was nowhere to be found.


I peeked back around the doorway as them boots came thumping down the hallway from both ends and I saw Tellesco enter the doorway to the library.  A mile-long stream of blue ghosts followed him, and I would have to join in their ranks to follow him.


Rurrrrgh.



That was the sound I made.  It was the sound I made whenever I had to do something highly unpleasant or really fucking gross and scary.



Rurrrgh.


I ran down the hallway to the library entrance and heard the sounds of gunfire behind me.



Them purple robes were shooting at me.



I made it inside the library and the gunfire stopped, but the boot-falls upon floor did not.



They were coming closer, fast.




Inside the library, I saw Tellesco standing by the window with the hanging sheet of plywood over it, and he was lit by an almost blinding blue light of hundreds of ghosts crowded in there.  It was like they were without boundaries.  They were superimposed upon each other like a slideshow of old photographic images all shown at once.



He smiled at me and said, “Watch out for the nails on the sides of this sheet.  They could mess you up.”


I plowed through the mists and decrepit visages of people who had been dead for a hundred years, and as I did, I slinted through each one in my path.


It overwhelmed me.


I was filled with their experiences, their happiness in another life, their pain, and their stories, and also, how they ended.


I would never be the same again.



In that old, empty library of forgotten secrets, some of which had been stolen by a golden crow lady, I learned.



Tellesco patted me on the back and pushed that old plywood cover up, and I slid through and out.  Then he joined me. 


We were outside, in the fresh night air.


It never smelled sweeter.

He grabbed me by the leather, but I felt numb from the slinting through them dead folks.



I tried to push it all away from my head.  That’s how I dealt with shit.  I didn't.



He said, “Mr. Will.  We gotta run.  But I don’t know where we hafta go?  I got all these dead people depending on me.  But you and me are the only ones alive besides them angry men coming for us!  What do we do now?”



What do we do?


Now?



Hah?



I stiffened up my knees and tried to recover.  The slinting had been quite a lot.  But I didn’t want to die.  I was not a hero to face a hail of bullets like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Fuck that.  Nope. Not for me.




At that moment, we heard the boots reach the library and they started shooting.  Bullets ripped through the plywood and echoed off into the clear desert air.

Time slowed down, as it does when your heart and your mind speeds up from adrenaline.

Your have a moment’s notice for how to react, and hopefully, you make the best decision.  Sometimes, you need to panic.




I grabbed Tellesco and shouted, “Stable!  Horses!”  I wasn’t making sense, but my intention was clear.


(Do Not Panic.)




The men in the room shot their guns as we ran off to the horse stable in the corral nearby, and then we heard them creak the plywood cover open and slide through.


Then we heard them scream in pain.


Watch out for them side nails, they could fuck you up.



Then we heard the sound of the plywood sheet hit the concrete paver stones on the ground below, and more of them purple robes jumped out and they tripped over the bodies of the ones rolling around in pain from slices across their face, their nose, and their eyes.


More hopped out, avoiding the pile of men on the ground lying about, writhing, and some of them started to shoot at me and Tellesco.


That was when the blue ones got their shit together.


I think it must have been Lorelei, because earlier, she had coalesced them blue ghosts in the hallway above, and they did some serious damage to the first purple robes who'd been shooting at me.


There were blue flashes of light and sounds of smacking and slamming, and that made the night air glow like lightning strikes.


As we ran to the closest edge of the long palace, we saw headlights flash from the other side, and then there was the most ungodly sound of glass exploding, tires shrieking, and metal ripping apart over and over again.


It kept rumbling along, as we ran, and we were followed by gun shots and flashes of them blue ghosts giving up their time here this little blue marble in their attack upon the purple robes.


We reached the corner of the building and Tellesco charged forth to the stables.  I grabbed him by the arm of this burnt leather and he fell down, but the little girl never let go of his neck. 


He slid and scrambled, and he got back up. He said, “Mr. Will?”


I said, “Tellesco, what the fuck is that shit out front?”


I crept along the side of the mansion to head to the front to see, and Tellesco waited, looking back over at the fight going on behind him. 

He said, “Mr. Will, come on, let’s get out of here now!”


I paid him no mind.  I was drawn.



I looked around the edge of the mansion into the light of the temporary lamp posts and saw a sleek, black semi-rig with cars all smashed up into it. 

A young man climbed over the heap of fucked up cars and he wielded a heavy, metal rod.


Holy shit.


It was Big Bryan.





But,




there was something else.



There was Someone Else.




I felt drawn to her.



She was a ghost.




Except for one thing.



She was not blue.



She was half white, and half red.



I knew who She was.


When Lorelei had said, “She’s here,” I had no clue.  I was a clueless bastard who didn’t know anything.



Until I did.



(I fell to my knees.)  



I had lost Her. 



I had pulled her from her vehicle, when she was dead and limp as a rag doll.


She had regurgitated mud and rainwater over my shoulder as I carried her body back to my stolen car in the desert deluge.


As I placed her into the passenger seat, Joey had arrived, in an older car.





(The world began to spin.)




Joey had said he would take her to safety in that new, fast car, but then he’d told me later that she hadn’t "made" it.


"She didn't make it."


Did


Not


Make



It.





(On my knees, I felt dizzy, and I fell down on my elbows.  I held my head in my hands as my mind began to spin.)


Fucking Joey had not delivered her in time to the hostibal.  I had told him to get her there as soon as he could, because her lungs were filled with desert rain and mud and silt because she had drowned in a desert arroyo and you could drown in the desert if the rain fell and you were driving at a high rate of speed and then you tried to save everyone so you sacrificed your mighty vehicle but you ended up sacrificing your own life and then fucking Joey was supposed to get you to the hostibal and save you so that it would not all end in vain and wait, what the fuck are you doing running with Big Bryan and right now outside of this fucked up place that ended up killing you---


Rurrrrgghh.




I shook my head.



Rurrrghh.


Fuck.



Time to wake the fuck up, no splotches of coffee on the floor in my bedroom in my home.


I crawled forth and looked around the corner and saw that Big Bryan was coming over this way.


He had seen the eruptions of blue light from behind the stately mansion.


I yelled out.



I said, “KATHEENA!”



Big Bryan stopped, but the One beside him did not.




She kept running towards me.




It was Her.









She had come to try and save me.







God Help You.


God Help Us All.


---willies out.







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