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From Can To Can’t   by Corey Taylor  

The two brothers sat across from each other without eye contact.  Another man sat on the third side of the tri-legged table, and he held his cards low, so to speak.

Their tell was their avoidance.  It went beyond sibling rivalry.  This went straight to the bone.  It looked to be outright rage and not hidden very well.

It also spoke of something else; the third man could see this with his own eyes. 

It had the scent of the air from a dark canyon, rising up from unknown depths.  Dust and night and emptiness.

Hell, he could even feel it in the tiny room.  It rumbled beneath the surface of the floor, like a dark aquifer, a bleak ocean below.  He felt the shivers from it.

These two men before him knew each other not as brothers, but each as someone other.

How could this be?

It was as if they knew each other as something else.

In such an intense moment of fear and rage and-

…despair?

The Chairman found a connection in his head.  This was connected somehow to the fatal séance of the High Priest and his Lady.

Gregor and Chrysalis were dead.

Gregor was overtaken by someone who had told him that his son was gone, screamed it out of the old man’s mouth.  Then he’d attacked the frail, once lovely Chrysalis, and he killed his own woman.

But both sons sat across from him now, not gone.  No one was gone.

Or were they?

Was it the prophesy?  Was this occurring? 

If so, this meant that the High Priest and Priestess and both of their sons were truly gone.

All was gone for them.

And all was ready for the taking.

For him.

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Barton Hollow   by The Civil Wars  

Emeralda walked through the underground system of tunnels beneath the estate of them Purple Robes. 

These were dug out of the hard-pan of the ancient river valley at great cost, decades ago.  Hard-pan is the sediment of a mighty river that has settled and hardened and baked under the unforgiving sun for thousands of years. 

The desert hides its secrets deep, even in the bright light of day.

But you know, my friend, that no secret will ever be truly kept.

A flood of magnificent proportion was soon to be unleashed.

She held her baby close and found the route to the parking garage.  Once there, she would find a large, heavy vehicle to transport them both.  She would find her other daughter and then these three would escape the ugly megalopolis of Fuckno.

Three at a table.

Three in flight.

A gang of punks in the north desert.

A mouth of Hell opened in the south.

War had begun.

Emeralda did not know this, but she knew the prophesies.

She was from the old country.

These would be her guide, once she had her children safe with her.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

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