TFW CH 4 BLUE DUNES

When you think that you have nothing left, what do you do?

It might be, in that moment, when you look inside.

You may find true wealth.

I hope that you do.

Tahoo.

The white utility truck backed out and swung around.  Bryan stepped out of the driver’s door and hopped up on its roof and shoved away the broken cinder blocks on it. 


It was time for us to go.



I helped Bryan get everyone collected up and into our new ride.

We had some interesting times ahead.  Ya think?

For My Friends   by BethHart and Joe Bonamassa 

Big Bryan looked down at his friends, sitting there in the cab beside him.

One was a little lion man, another was a utility worker, and another one was a huge dude who went by the name of Tellesco.  And then there was his best friend.

It was me.

The only one who looked back at him was me.  The others were out for the count.

He put that white-painted utility truck into gear and drove us out of that little tar patch, down to the country lane ahead.  He turned left, to head north.  He had a plan.

In a while, he would take a right turn and deliver us all from the evil of Fuckno.

Head to the desert,

Head to the East.

Look for the answer,

Look for the Beast.

The answer would be to find the beast, and kill it.

He just didn’t know that the beast was dressed in a purple robe, there in the ugly desert megalopolis of Fuckno.

It was a beast that had many heads.

He would help us escape this night, and then we would return to fight the beast.

Bryan drove her forth, thinking about what lied ahead for himself, and for us all.  He felt like he was the only one at the wheel, and he was correct.

What had he been thinking?

All this time, in jail, waiting to be released, and then that girl with the frosty voice had joined him.

He didn’t know who she was, but that didn’t matter.  What mattered was that she had told him a dream.

It involved one of those beside him on the bench seat.

He simply did not know which one it was.

Hell, he had his own demons to face.

Who was he to judge another?

Who was he to help anyone at all?

A demon to face, indeed.

As he drove forth, he saw a peculiar blue spark ahead, in the north of the desert.  It beckoned him to come closer, like a moth to the flame.

The attraction was quite powerful.   He looked over at we four passengers, and saw that we were all asleep.

Exhausted, from a hell of a night.

He looked forward, at the blue spark, and he thought that it was a haven.

He would take us there.

You know, Bryan did the best he could, in that moment.

He should not be blamed.

Everything’s For Sale   by Henry’s Funeral Shoe 

The tiny blue spark beckoned him, and it would not be ignored.

He drove that huge truck toward the light, and he felt like it held all of the answers.

He was correct, but it was too soon.

The others beside him dozed in various states of unconsciousness, all awaiting our doom.

But instead of a small cabin at the end of tiny lanes in the unforgiving night desert, he found a pile of vehicles to the right.  Across from the pile, a bit further northward, he saw the blue spark.

He stopped the heavy utility vehicle on the side of the road and opened the door.

The blue spark to his left vanished.  He grabbed the flashlight and hopped down and out.

He strode forth, over the hard-packed sand and looked about on the ground, searching for clues.

As he walked, he heard behind him the sounds of his passengers awakening. He ignored them.  He was going to find something truly marvelous, he was sure of it.

He heard his best friend shout from the big truck, “Bryan!  Where did you go?!  You drove us out here?!”

He shined the flashlight ahead, and something glinted.

As he neared it, he saw that it was a smooth, low, golden rock.

It was quite large.

He jogged closer, shining the light all about it.

It was submerged in the sand, drowned in th the desert.

It was the roof of a car.

He heard his friend shout after him, “You did it all wrong!  We were supposed to head away from here!”

He ignored my shout.

He reached the car.  The window was intact on this side, but broken on the driver’s side.  Sand, like once-wet mud slurry, had been poured into the broken window like a lung full of a death gasp.

Drowned in the desert indeed.

Katheena.

Bryan had found Katheena’s car, her once-adored golden beast.  It had made the claw marks in the weak, sun-scorched tar south of us all.


She had named her car, "Phoenix."

The rear of the vehicle held books that no one knew anything about.  They were hidden inside a secret compartment, and Katheena had stolen them from the drowned mansion.




Before she had died.


I had taken her from this vehicle in the desert rain storm.

Them books were the tools we might be able to use to make a stand.

Across the dunes, Bryan heard the sound a horse makes when it is afraid.

Bryan shivered.  He did not know what the hell he was doing there.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

I Shiver   by Robert Cray