Chapter 01: We Are All Angels

The phone lines blink in an array of red across the switchboard at WCHR as Bishop Delaney and Rabbi Baum spoke. The Christian syndicated radio station hosted the Jewish leader in an attempt to broaden viewership and address criticism from local officials that the station was alienating sections of the community with a more radical view dismissing all other religions as foolish and useless. The religious figures had maintained a civil discussion, but each held their views as infallible and the conversation was hitting a wall of belief versus belief without reason or acceptance of opposing views.

"Let's break this up a bit and go to the phone lines." Johnny Treiger slapped his hand down on the switchboard at random connecting line 32. "You are live. What is your question?"

A female voice rang clear ripping into the brick wall of the Rabbi's beliefs with an notably un-Christian display of vulgarity before Johnny cut the line. "Let's try that again. You are live and remember to watch your language."

A young man loaded up and unleashed an anti-Christianity rant that managed to get twelve words before the vulgarity sang out again. Three more calls varied the attacks on each leader before each became too impassioned to be maintained civilly.

"Let's try one more time. You are live. Language and civility considerations are appreciated."

"Hi. I will be as civil and brief as I can be." The male voice calmly played out across the nation.

"We appreciate that. What is your comment or question?"

"No question, really. I just wanted to relay the meaning of life across the airwaves to hopefully break up the silliness that is this entire discussion you are having there today."

"Not so silly that you aren't listening in, I assume." Johnny smirks at his producer through the glass.

"Agreed. This came across my radio as I was flipping stations and had to pull over to give my two cents. Everybody that is listening and calling in with this deep rage in them over either side or both sides in this today need to step back. All religions are a joining of like minded people looking for guidance. We want to have some rules in the world to feel safe to be ourselves and live our lives, but we don't have tolerance for those wanting the same on their own set of rules. The truth is that... if you want peace, be peaceful. If you want tranquility, be tranquil. It isn't so hard. Be the change you want to see and stop taking everything so personal. You can only control what you do, so do it. And stop arguing so much. We have all heard actions speak louder than words, so go. Jimmy Tuscon. Signing off."

The line goes dead. Johnny Treiger and his two guests stare blankly across the booth at each other.

"Something to think about for us all." Johnny speaks, but his voice comes out in a hushed and subdued manner. "I see our guests are taking in the advice as well."

"True. Be well, Rabbi."

"And you also, Bishop."

In the booth, three men sit oblivious to the glow growing from their scalps. The entire radio station hums with the silence of the fluorescent lights and the subtle glow coming from the heads of all listening employees. From the station headquarters in New Jersey across the country in patches of listeners nationwide, the streets will be a little brighter in the evenings as millions of now docile listeners sport brand new halos.

001: Long Winter's Nap

As I lay dawn for a long winter's nap setting the alarm clock for April, a scuttle beneath the bed arises from the floor boards resonating into the rafters. Peering beneath the bed skirt to discover the scuttlebutt would frighten a wiser man, but this fearless being wrestled down the terrors of beasts of ill will living beneath the confines of the box spring decades ago. The desk lamp’s piercing light probed deeper and deeper into the mystery as the hem of fabric teasing the floor boards is lifted inch by inch. The raggedy edge of a long forgotten white sock is the first discovery though no treasure hunter would find this news worthy. Further probing and farther reaching, the light slips deeper and deeper into the wary depths of the cavern below the bed. The sock sits alone for a few inches before a black shape shuffles to the left and back to the right like some tiny running back escaping the tackling of the glowing light. Inches more light flood in and capture the cricket rushing for the safety of night on the other side of the room.

The mystery appears solved until a gentle nibbling noise is heard from the far corner of the bed. Flashlight in hand, a stronger attack on the dark reveals a tiny mouse nibbling on the bed post. The foot to the bed is feet away, but t is apparent from the angle this is not the mouse’s first patronage to this woodsy diner. A few raps of the flashlight against the metal under wiring to the bed frame ends the dinner prematurely as the mouse is heard scurrying out towards that same dark night as the cricket. Perhaps a refined ear can catch a crunching noise imagined to be the young mouse finding the aforementioned cricket a much more satisfying meal for the evening. A snap cracks through the quiet evening as a mouse trap takes its place at the top of the rodent food chain for the night.

A click of the flash light and flapping of the bed skirt dropping to the floor accentuate the stillness in the room. With only the bed lamp to quell before slumber can grasp the edges of reality and shake it from this place, a clatter of objects shift loudly and settle to the ground in the closet. Though startling to the stillness, no surprise or upheaval results from what has always been considered a leaning tower of baseball bats, hats, boxes and shoes waiting to give gravity its due. Another task beckons in the morning in the form of clean up, but the slumbering giant weighs heavy on the room and tonight is not the night for such concerns. The bed lamp sets just sixteen inches away from the bed highlighting the narrowness of the gap between the stumbling remains of consciousness and the graceful bounding dreams waiting.

In a blink, the lamp is smashed to the ground by an unseen paw and darkness prevails. The extinguished light dashes the definition of the room into a million points of bleak darkness. Previously unheard yet so heavy on the floor boards, only foot falls can be observed in the room before a pair of beady red eyes float up from the foot of the bed over the headboard. A warm draft pours over the pillow and warms what can only be assumed will be a final midnight snack for the beast in the dark. A retched odor hangs in the warm air over my face as the long winter’s nap becomes certain to be extended indefinitely.

Morning Jingles

Sarah rolls out of bed not realizing how close to the edge she had shifted in her sleep. The corner of the oak table next to the bed pierces her pajama top dragging a jagged streak up her back as she slips to the floor. Her shouts of pain echo expletives into the empty room. Her screams end with the back of her head laid out on the top of the nightstand. Her eyes stare up at the ceiling fan regaining focus on a dull hum and the squeak and wobble of the fan base that Josh never installed correctly. Memories of his incompetence normally made her smile if it weren't for the blood dripping down her back and the bump on the back of her skull.

One hand on the ground and one hand clenching the back of her top to keep blood out of the hardwood floor, Sarah rushes to the bathroom to change. A flick of the switch begins the slow buzz of the light fixture bringing a dim glow to the bathroom an instant too late for Sarah to see the open drawer. Her knee crashes through the cheap plywood crushing the drawer frame and spilling the contents onto the floor. Bouncing goes the hairbrush. Hopping goes the jar of cotton swabs. Crash goes the mirror across the tile floor coating each step to the medicine cabinet with shards of reflective glass.

Minutes tick by on the clock on the night stand while a set of bloody footprints form across the wood floor of the bedroom. A ding is heard clearly through the lonesome apartment, camera swinging to the kitchen where Sarah is sitting enjoying a cup of coffee with blood still dripping from her toes.

The least shitty part of your day could be Folgers in your cuuuup.

Terry finishes singing the last line into the receiver of his home phone, feet propped proudly on the kitchen table. "What do you think? We've never truly tapped into that pessimistic, 'I hate the world' crowd."

Click goes the line, dead as a job prospect from a top advertising firm.

An Undeserved End

On the trail past Bumbler Creek, a man lay stone skinned and dead staring into the night sky but grasping not of the depths of stars. The eyes grow grey one a deep blue like the passing breeze that now carried his stench like a leaf into civilized company. The nails on his hand turned backward as if projecting a film into the darkness of the struggle lost. Terror locked away into his unblinking eyes in their dim tones speaking to the ravenous pain long since drained into the lifeless creek. The shoeless foot lay bare and gnarled; another lost battle, this with the cold of the November evenings and the damp winds swept up from the waters. Three shoes stand silently, his torn from his foot and my two standing next to the scene. On three consecutive nights, the cloud cover bore shadow to the secrets of the open grave while I walk back and forth from my home to Rochelle. She, who is my destination this night, blinds me on my return plodding down the path home. My sight set on the lights quarter mile on leave me witless to see the wolves known to these woods. My heart skipping buoyantly on the sea which long since had claimed his. My step gingerly approaches each night past his un-waking horror.

Where was he aimed when tragedy struck? Did his heart also beat expectantly and blindly to the dangers of the dark? Was the warm breath of his end at the back of his neck as he dreamt of another’s? Did he cry a lost love’s name to the pert ears not understanding or caring? Did he plead to a mind unconcerned? Did he fight back against a will stronger than his own and accept the judgments of nature? I stand pondering for what seems like hours though my watch ticks only seconds away from me. I glance to the horizon at the unnatural light and back to the body.

“Shit happens, I suppose.” I speak to the night and direct my vision to the light in the distance.

DotT - Chapter One: Late Again

It was a Tuesday morning when the things with the tentacles took over. Tommy recalled this day for the few survivors he met along the way. Every Tuesday morning, Tommy would meet at the equivalent of the water cooler for the NFL week in review with Sam Baxter and Chris Haver meaning they stood together in front of the Coke machine in the lobby of the office building leasing space to Lawyer and Lawyer, LLC. The humor of the naming by the partners was a big reason for Tommy to seek the paralegal position there. Sam appeared one day at Tommy's desk one Tuesday morning launching into a rant on the Eagles taking Michael Vick and the implications of youth tormenting animals leading to sociopath behavior. Tommy placed the Farmer brief back on top of his "to read" pile so as not to lose his place. A voice over his shoulder joined in relating a story of a case from two years back in which a man had a history of capturing and torturing woodland animals in his youth before he was brought to court for being pulled over with the hands of twelve dead men in the glove box of his car. They, of course, defended him and attempted to claim the hands came with the car and there was no proof he had indeed killed these men, They lost the case, but it had lead to the running joke about having 24 hands in a glove box but no pairs of gloves. Chris and Sam became Tommy's closest work friends ever from that point forward.

This morning, however, Tommy was running late to work. He directed the front end of his Taurus through the parking lot and quickly into the only spot available far from the elevator in the parking garage. he was certain he would be reprimanded for his late arrival by the partners when he saw that Marian Fisher was still in her car in the reserved parking spot near the elevator. She did not look at him as he passed or attempt to get out of her car. The only thing she seemed to take notice of was the odd green boa she had brought along to work that day. Tommy chuckled at the odd sense of humor of his bosses as he continued along to the elevator bank. He did not grasp that the boa around Marian's neck was not a joke or made of feathers as he had initially thought. He barely caught the unassisted movement of the boa as the elevator doors closed. In sixty seconds, Tommy was at street level and crossing Randolph to his office. He gave a friendly yet unhelpful wave to the homeless man curled up on the sidewalk next to the front door in the green army jacket with the odd looking green tubes wrapped around his chest. "Anything to stay warm in that situation, I suppose," Tommy thought to himself. He would wrap himself in White Castle burger wrappers if it would help him survive a cold Chicago night without a home.

A squeal erupted from behind him as Tommy pulled the front door toward him and stepped on something squishy. Without looking back, he slid his shoes across the mats inside the front door and picked up the pace to minimize his tardiness. He waved to Hank at the security desk and rushed by the elevator bank as Hank screeched at Tommy rushing past. Hank also had a strange sense of humor, but never had the vocal range to pull off a sound so eerie. "Good for Hank," thought Tommy as he slammed his finger onto the button for the fifth floor. Two minutes of muzak ripped through the pleasant silence of the day forcing Tommy to look around for something to take his attention away from the torment of the instrumental version of MacArthur Park. The ticking up of the numbers was little distraction, but the smears of red on the elevator buttons on the opposite side of the elevator combined with the green glop on the short carpeting of the elevator. It appeared like a struggle had occurred here but Tommy was far too late this morning to spend his brain power thinking that over as the doors open and Tommy launched himself into the weirdest work day of his life.

Bedtime Stories

"Tell me a story!" Terry's chin pierced solidly into his chest, crestfallen. Moments after turning out the lights on what he thought was his slumbering drunken room mate. The slurred speech twisted his words into a single, nearly incomprehensible word. Terry could feel his night slipping away from him. Every alternating Saturday in Terry's work schedule during college football season, he found himself babysitting his roommate Frank. Frank has a standard stool at O'Malley's every Saturday beginning at 9am, hours before any game began. Frank had a tendency to become the alumni of any team with a large following at the bar on any given day. Today was the University of Iowa alumni group doing shots for every punt forced. It was a good day for the Hawkeyes.

"I'm not hearing any yarns being spun!" Frank's sense of time was slipping and his grasp on his esophagus was serviceable at best as "spun" was cut short with a guttural eruption. A wobbly arm rose slowly from the bed like a mummy in an old horror movie before a clumsy snapping sound was heard. Terry glanced out the door to the stairway down to the noise of his friends arriving. Shoulders slumped, he returned to his inebriated companion whose snapping fingers had lost the ability to make more than a subtle slapping sound as he continued to fail on his snaps.

"Well, what kind of story do you want to hear, little man?" If Frank was going to act like a child, Terry though, then I'll would treat him as such.

"I don't knoooooow. Just tell me something to make the room stop spinning." Frank bragged about his iron stomach claiming stories helped for his mind to focus and keep the room from spinning and tossing him into a bucket. He never bought into the "quitters" as he called the people who believed they would feel better the next day if they vomited when they had too much to drink instead of fighting it. A collection of audio books were kept on his mp3 player for such an occasion as when NPR was in music mode or, if drunk enough early enough, if "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" is on.

The sound of something heavy falling downstairs increasing the urgency to put Frank out of his misery quickly. "Alright. I've got a story for you. Once upon a time in this very room, a poorly shaved slob of a man decided to grace the world with his lumpy form on the beach by the lake."

"It's too cold for the beach today." Frank could be imagined to be pouting though Terry could not see with Frank's face buried deep in his pillow.

"That's why I started with 'once upon a time'. It didn't have to be upon today's time."

"Oh."

"So off to the beach you go with your towel, your 5 SPF because you are too stupid to avoid burning and old school style boom box that you unconvincingly hide a six pack inside."

"I did that ONCE!" Frank swatted blindly in the air nearly slapping Terry from his seat now at the edge of the bed. Sliding a little farther out of arm's reach, Terry hurries back into the tale.

"Well, on this day, you tried and succeeded as nobody cared about your drinking due to the fact that the beach was been ravaged by a GIANT KILLER SCORPION FROM THE SEA!" Terry paused hoping for silence and getting a muffled chuckle in return.

"You drop your beer filled electronics and tube of sunscreen in terror as you back away from the enormous arachnid over body parts of fellow beach visitors."

"Crustacean!" Terry shook his head. Frank got a D in Biology in college and thought he was an expert at everything.

"It's in the spider family."

"How many spiders have you seen at the beach?"

"Scorpions are in most desert stories. They live in the sand."

"So it came from the sand, not the sea."

"A huge ass scorpion FROM THE SAND is lumbering down the beach clipping limbs and shearing bodies in half. The blood is turning the beach into a mile long kitchen sponge soaking up the nicks and cuts of a million botched dices and juliennes."

"Rough chopped? Sliced? Brunoise? Minced? Chiffonaded?"

"What? Yes. Right." The confusion drifted in and out quickly as Terry remembered Frank's obsession with Food Network. "A chiffonade of legs with minced piles of brains! Mashed eyeballs and a brunoise of liver! Intestines drug out for the lengthiest sausage you've ever seen..."

Frank began to chuckle and mumble under his breath. Terry tentatively leaned in and slowly processed the word he was chuckling. "Sausage."

"This is ridiculous. Moving along. You rush for the tunnel under the street by the beach but are spotted by the thing's beady little eyes. It clamors over beach umbrellas, briefly gets tangled in a volleyball net and paused to bat a lemonade stand aside like a small insect. You clomp and stomp noisily towards your salvation, but the beast closes in on you running to the tunnel because you are a man wearing flip flops in public and unable to run away. Thus your last breath is nigh and deserved. The beast lifts you in the air from the small of your back and begins spinning you like a basketball around and around and around. The world spins around you blending colors and lights into a swirling cloud of imminent death. To reiterate, you are about to die and being spun around and around and around and arou..."

Two hands grasp Terry unexpectedly feels two hands shove him away. He lands hard on the ground watching Frank leap over him in a rush to the bathroom. The sounds of a "quitter" fill the hall. Terry lifts himself from the ground and walks back downstairs to the gathered friend in a world where it is still only 7pm and everyone else is still sober.

Annie

She has been training her eyes to see through it all. She's been on the valedictorian track since freshman year, but, three years later, she has yet to make any social impact. As much as she tries to be seen and be heard, only her teachers will really listen. She spends weekends alone with her family working around the house on projects her parents have put together for gardening and renovations. As much as she enjoys the time spent with family, this is not by choice.

Annie has struggled to fit in despite growing up with everyone in the community. When she had a birthday party at age 5, everyone was there. By age 10, the ones that were still at her parties had become transparent in their unwillingness to be there. At least her parents had friends and means to get them to bring their kids to the party. The shift from children with no real insight on each other to young men and women learning that they have a choice of who they should be and be associated with was too much for Annie. She spent time on the fringe in the hallways listening to the cliches that she was not a part of to find out what she was missing.

After years of imparting herself into each group as a floating body, Annie began infiltrating each with some subtle suggestions. In Chemistry, she noted to Christine that she liked the drawings on her book cover of the griffin. It reminds me of my favorite role playing game, she had started and continued as Christine's eyes widened. Annie was successful at becoming part of the role playing cliche, but only in the moments when the group was gathered away from everyone else.

When she was with the athletic group, she was the runner who followed the track circuit and marathoners in professional competition and Olympics. With the drama group, she quoted plays and songs from musicals. Annie found herself going from group to group so often that she no longer had alone time between any classes on any given day. Her grades began to slip steadily with the effort she was putting in to fit into the molds each group had her set into. She had no time for studying she realized one Wednesday night as she found herself slipping into bed after midnight having had no time to put into her studies.

"I feel like Jane Goodall with the apes. I've associated myself so well that I could be one of any of them, but who does that make me? They have all latched onto an identity they have chosen for themselves, but I don't see anything in any of them that I can identify with. They all think I'm something different, but I'm no longer a person when I'm alone as if I only exist in someone else's head", she says to no one.

The next day, Annie attempted to return to her place in society as the studious book worm she had been before, but found her new standing in each group threatening that. She declined time to discuss the preference on number of sides to a die for gaming and if training for a run in bursts of high to low speeds was better than a straight steady pace for a long distance. She shook her head each time someone gave her a quote from a play or line from a song as she did not recognize them in some cases and, in most cases, was too preoccupied catching up on homework to give any thought. Within days, she was an outsider again.

For three weeks, Annie settled back into her groove of spending all of her time working on school work and with her family at home. The phone calls slowly ceased from the different groups, but she did not notice for a couple more weeks when she suddenly started missing the calls. Annie found the reentry to be nearly impossible. She was beginning to understand the concept of burning bridges behind her.

One night, Annie slept soundly. She awoke feeling as refreshed as she ever remembered feeling. She smiled in the morning out of pure happiness and her eyes settled into every piece of the morning from brushing and flossing her teeth to the scarf she tied around her neck as she prepared to walk out the front door. She made one final stop in her parents' bedroom before heading out the door and off to school.

Through the front doors, Annie travelled into the long corridor of people she had pretended to truly know. She felt a burning in her chest that did not upset her. The burning heated up her face and the smile that formed there was sickly and frightening to anyone who may have noticed her. She was sure nobody did notice her.

"I had a wonderful dream last night," she stated in a voice too weak to pierce the cluster of noises from group after group of friends engulfed in their own discussions. Undaunted, she tried again. "I had a wonderful dream last night," she shouted to the full hallway and reached into her backpack. The hallway quieted for a moment and some groups started to turn her way when they placed where the shout had come from. A young man in her class she had never noticed coincidentally as he was in her same outsider circle grabbed her and pulled her into the empty classroom. He held the wrist of her hand deep in her back pack.

"I don't have a good feeling about your intentions with that smile and the focused intent of your hand in that bag. Can you please spread your fingers wide and pull your hand back out?" Neal's frightened eyes met the half crazed eyes of Annie. He felt her fight with his hand to hold onto the surprise in her bag. "Please, Annie."

It could have been the please repeated to her with those pleading eyes, but Annie would later realize it was the use of her name that snapped her out of her psychotic break. The realization that she was an actual person to someone she did not know and had put no false pretenses into went a long ways towards breaking her down. She pulled her hand out empty and dropped the bag to the ground. Annie backed away almost surprised when the bag fell open and the handgun from her parents' bedroom slipped out. Neal barely registered that actual sight of the gun having already convinced himself of what she had been reaching for moments earlier.

They talked for an hour outside of the school skipping their first period classes. Neal comforted Annie telling her she was not alone. He was the second in line for valedictorian behind her and had always watched her in awe. He was not jealous of her ability, he was in love with it. When Annie slipped off the academic radar for a bit, he did his own investigation and saw how she had conformed herself to the multitude of seemingly self assured students in their class. It turned out that Neal was one of the few students actually sure of himself and his place in life.

He explained to Annie how the loner role was not really the shunned outcast of the world when it came to high school. Neal had observed the same groups Annie was pushing herself into, but from the individual stand point. When Annie and the majority of the group left the hallway, Neal observed a single group member at her locker or staring at himself in the mirror in the restroom. Outside of the group, the people Annie was jealous enough of to want to shoot were less sure of their place in life than even she was before she lost herself.

Annie went back on her track and ended up narrowly beating out Neal for the speech at graduation. She thanked her fellow students for teaching her something in her four years in that high school. She spoke of a sense of camaraderie and a sense of purpose, but she urged each student to find out who they were individually and not to settle for anything less than what they truly desired in life. She accepted the applause knowing well that most were not paying attention and many would not understand her words until years later when the truly valuable time of learning about themselves was nearly over. Neal stood the longest and clapped the loudest to Annie's ears. Life for each of them was wide open.


There's something in the way she makes believe, please be careful, Annie dreams that everyone is dead. - Our Lady Peace