Time after time.

I would be the keeper of lost hours.  Our little daylight savings redundancies, lost and found and lost and found, over and over, confused and wasted and forgotten.  Isn’t there alot of life in them, don’t you think?  You could argue, and doubtless you will (I know I’m not supposed to poke the bear because roar roar snarl snarl, but I can almost feel your correction through the ether.  I can sense it.) that the hours eat themselves, are just absorbed back into the timeline proper, but….for one day in November, there are 2 2 ams.  And I have never seized them.  I have never used them. I have slept them away as if they were nothing, a given.  How selfish.  How blind.
And so I’ve made a home for them now in my head and my heart, my little orphans, and I’ve used them like building blocks to create a revisionists history that is true because I thought of it and they are mine, so woe to the nay-sayes, woe to the infidels, crash against my walls, but you will not breach my keep.
My bedtime story.  Told in 40 stolen hours-28 for each year of my life, and 12 I purloined from you when you weren’t looking.  You weren’t using them.  Time’s never mattered to you, has it?
I have used it as consolation; I have sung myself to sleep with it, and when everything else was too horrible, or more often, simply too mundane, I have carried it with me and walked under it, my umbrella that kept the present from touching me.
Oliver beside me.  His hand in my hand.  His body against my body. His voice in my ears.  It has been a salvation dream.  The one thing that has kept my body and being in the living, even if my mind and spirit wanders.
And so, after Oliver left, I have spent every daylight savings November experiencing the duel 2 o’clocks, savoring them, tasting them, setting a trap for the useless lost twin, and capturing it by it’s slippery hide.  This is my way.  This is my wont.
This year Liam and Monsterman and I sat together, waiting to catch a peak of it, children anticipating a particularly invisible Santa Claus, confident that though we wouldn’t see him, we would feel him.
“So you do this every year?”, Liam asked, sipping from the open and half-empty bottle of red wine.  It was not our first.
“I do.  Does that seem odd?”
He shrugged.  “Odd is relative.  It’s unusual, but I guess alot of traditions are….”
“You know, I never really considered it a tradition….”
“No?”
“More of a ritual.”
He scratched his head, then the head of the Huckleberry he was sitting on.  Post spider athletics, they have become enormously, gigantically fat.  So much so that I regret lessening the impact of the word by ever describing them thus before.
“Explain the difference.”
I took a swig of the wine, noted it was terrible, and then drank some more.
“Well…I think a tradition you do just because you’ve always done it.  A ritual you do for something, you know.  For a result.”
“A good harvest.”
“Good crops.”
“Fine wine.”
“Excellent cheese.”
“Fertile bellies.”
“Potent sperms.”
He nodded.  “So what’s your end result?”
I shrugged.  “I’ve never fully known, I guess.  It’s just that somehow after Oliver left, it seemed like it was wrong to waste the time.”
“But you didn’t give up sleep altogether.”
“I never gave it up…someone murdered it.”
“Foul play.  You’re quoting someone, and I am a little too drunk and too tired to know exactly who.”
“Shakespeare.  Hamlet.  Punch me.”
He did.
“Ow.”
“You said to.  Why did you say to?”
“You should have probably asked that before you executed…but because I’m not the sort of motherfucker who casually quotes Shakespeare.”
He punched me again.
“Hey!”
“No, you’re right, you really deserve to be punched for that.”
“But you already punched me.”
“But it didn’t count.  That first punch was just for fun.  This one counted.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“You’re a very strange man…”
“Yes…so I’ve been told.”
I rested my head against Monsterman’s knee.  He has become, somehow, a strange mix between furniture, pet, constant companion, and dearly grieved loved one.  I do not know what he is.  I do not know what life he has, versus what life I’ve given him.  But I would miss him.
Anyway, I digress, and I’m allowed, it’s my right, so keep that in mind, Liam, while you’re proofreading this, because I didn’t particularly appreciate some of your cuts and edits yesterday! (My friends, enemies, Romans, countrymen, whatever your affiliation, I tell you this.  It is very difficult writing honestly when you know some Priest might just go through and willy-nilly remove the part where you point out he’s drunk on 7 dollar red wine.  Guess what, Father?  I CAN REDO ANYTHING YOU UNDO!  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that….)
“I think”, I said, rolling my head-which was, after a couple of bottles of wine, the only part of me that moved with any sort of dependability, if not, in the strictest sense, obedience-in his direction, “the only real question of any import is why you’re here.”
“You invited me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, you should have.”
I shrugged.  “Should I have?”
He nodded.  “Sure.  I have a lot of experience with being all nocturnal and shit.”
“Ah yes….more allusions to the mysterious life of Liam Whatever-your-last-name-is.  What are we talking here, Fitzpatrick?  O’brian?McCarthy?”
“Romanov.”
“How dare you!”
“Well, I didn’t choose it….”
“BOOOO!  We hate it.”
” ‘We’?”
“Hiddlestein and I.”
“You speak for both of you now?”
“Yes.  Because I am a girl and he is a boy, and he will agree with my lady parts.”
“He may not like lady parts.”
Of course.  Here I was forcing heteronormity on my monster, and giving him no say in the question.  In that moment, I was deeply, wildly ashamed.
I patted his knee and said, “Hiddlestein, you like whatever and whoever you want.  Just not animals.  Or inanimate objects.  Or dead people.”
Liam shrugged.  “I’m not so sure there’s anything wrong with a dead people liking dead people.”
“You are a very weird priest.”
“Many would argue I’m not really a priest.”
Well, duh.  I mean, obviously.  But…
“No one in this town.”
He nodded.
“Right.  There was a time when they almost accepted me as not a priest, but I think they’d all done a few too many confessions and gotten a little too comfortable with me.”
“There is more about you that I don’t understand than that I do.”
“Ask me anything.  I’m an open book.”
“Why are you so nocturnal?”
A long pause, the sort you expect from open books….
“I went through a very long….sickness.  It kept me up nights.  It murdered sleep.”
So I punched him.
“Hey!”
“That’s what we do to Shakespeare quoters around these parts.”
“I took it from you.”
“And I took my licks.  And a little extra.  So I owed you.”
He rolled his eyes.  “Whatever.”
“So what was this illness?”
“Oh, just, you know, sick.”
“The sound of an open book closing.”
“I really thought you’d ask more interesting questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like….I don’t know.”
“Fair enough.”
“Fair enough.”

*Editor’s note: I’m going to allow this to happen, as it happened, with a few slight omissions.  I am after all, the man with the red pen, figuratively speaking.  BUT:  I want any potential readers to know that I am just as concerned as you are about the fact that Karen has just neglected to finish the story she started telling yesterday.  I of course know the conclusion, but it seems generally remiss to me to just leave that thread hanging there.  I will have very harsh words with her.

Impossible.

There’s got to be a place to start-and a good one-somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I can find it.  I’ve spent hours, or at very least, the past several minutes, attempting to find it, and I’ve come up with “why not here?”.

The answer’s surprisingly simple, when you come down to it.
Because here makes no sense.  It’s located roughly at a latitude of “huh” and a longitude of “what the fuck”, and I can tell you that those coordinates might serve you just dandily in the summer, but in the winter, we need something a bit more tropical.  Something with a bit more sunshine.
But to over-extend my simile, as is my privilege- it’s my blog and I’ll metaphor if I want to, metaphor if I want to, metaphor if I want to-my compass has broken, it’s magnet’s gone mad, and I just need a minute to orient.
So here. This is where we are. Let us take a look at the landscape.
The Huckleberries are curled up at my feet.  Lawrence has some serious misgivings about them lingering in the diner, but since the spiders came, he’s developed a real affection for them.  You might go so far as to say he downright tolerates them.  When I’m not looking, he often feeds them any and all scraps and garbage-he claims it’s because he’s afraid they’ll eat him if there isn’t a steady supply of food going into their stomachs, but I’ve explained repeatedly that they are far too lazy to eat a person.  So I have to assume his actions are fueled by a) a fondness for the beasties and b) a fondness for what they do to his rubbish.  And it serves the duel purpose of guaranteeing I leave the diner several times a day to attend to the behemoth gastrointestinal needs of my darling monsters, which gets his worst waitress out of his hair a few times a day.
Hershel is sitting at our table, sipping coffee with Liam.  They’re chatting about some stuff and nonsense that I’ve been pretending to pay attention to, but in reality am just nodding and smiling about.  And let us truly hope that’s not a sentence to hang myself from, a confession, as it were.  You see, I’ve been granted limited blogging privileges, provided Liam proofreads what I write and gives his assurance that it won’t incite any future incidents.  No more spiders on our watch.  I’m crossing my fingers that he’s planning on just rubber stamping this….

Bad news.  I’m sorry. Let me interject.  I am not going to rubber stamp this.

Ahem.  Sorry.  Back.  You’d think someone, somewhere would have taught him not to take the keyboard from a lady.  Shouldn’t that be, like, week one of divinity school?  Surely in the heady rush of all those “thou shalt not”s, someone slid in an “interrupt a blog post.”  I’m nothing of a Biblical scholar, but it’s in there somewhere.  I’d stake my Pulitzer on it.

Anyway, as should have surprised exactly no one, but especially not me, the spiders were blamed pretty directly on my blog.
But before I can even start to consider explaining what and who and how that all went down, I think there needs to be a completion to that night.  Dawn, if you will.  And it went a little something like this:

The Huckleberries romped through the waves of spiders, downright frolicked, the mother-fuckers, chomping and diving, a strange and fearful blur of human and canine features.  I will never be able to fully and accurately describe what I saw that night, the odd flavor of impossible and familiar that filled my mouth, and that I have accepted.  Where my mind lingers is in how rapidly my reality stretched and formed itself to the new order. How your eyes accept what you see, so much quicker than your ears accept what you hear, even though at end of the day, we are all senses, and we all lie, and we all tell the truth. We turn our water into wine, and with that magic set of hands, our absolute becomes our fantasy.  And yet, even as some part of me lingers there in that window, listening to the steady chomp, chomp, chomp, in three-four time, watching the hounds with the knees and elbows and chins of men, move with the speed of fable and the grace of forgetfulness, I am standing in a diner, burning coffee and staring at the impossibly fat Huckleberries who are somehow the same, and I believe everything.  And I believe nothing.
Anyway.
Liam and I were staring out the window, but Hershel was poking Hiddlestein with a popsicle stick.  We looked over when we heard an “Oof!”
“Hershel!  What the blue hell…?”
He looked at us excitedly, then downright capered.  I had thought the peak of strangeness for my evening would be the shimmering transformation of the Huckleberries between dog and human and back again, never ending, but no, somehow not that, nor the sea of spiders, compared to the vision of Hershel-a hardboiled egg on toothpick legs-dancing around Hiddlestein like some mad elf.
Liam put his hands on Hershel’s shoulders to keep him steady and to prevent the inevitable fall-Humpty Dumpty’s fate was pre-destined, as we all know.
“Hershel.  Why did you ‘oof’?”
“I didn’t!  It was him!  It was Hiddlestein!”
“I call bullshit.  Monsterman has nothing to say.  He’s unimpressed.”
Liam walked slowly, cautiously to our dear, cadaverous friend.  “His eyes do look a little more open.”
I threw up my hands.  “Nonsense.  It’s like when you think a doll is watching you.  It’s just your mind….”
Liam nodded.  “That might be accurate.  It sounds accurate.  But…”
“But what?  I mean, it’s impossible, right?”
Liam looked at me, the longest, strangest look I believe I’ve ever received.  I will always carry a little piece of that with me-just a hint of the upward curve of his lip, the corner of the crinkle of the fold of his eye.  He walked over to me, put a hand on the small of my back and the other on my waist, then turned me towards the window.
“I have no more rubric for impossible.”, he said.  “My threshold for the concept started low, and now it has vanished.  It is entirely possible that there are still things that are IMpossible in this world, but I don’t want to be the one who names them.  I’ll let them show themselves first.”
And bitter as it tasted, I had to acknowledge, he had a point.  A  dull, blunt one, one that makes your writing all sloppy and smudgy, but a point none the less.
The thing is, we need impossible things.  We need what cannot happen, because they are our limits.  They are the boundaries that keep the world in, that keep it from exploding out of us.  And I could feel it then, and I can feel it now, pushing against my seams, threatening to burst me into idea and memory, potential and waste.  And so I cling to the impossible, and won’t let you take that from me.
But before we could further explore the question of Monsterman: light as a feather or just stiff as a board, the phone rang.  The phone.
I barely remembered I had a phone.
Hershel answered it.
“Karen’s home and Hershel’s la-bor-a-tory, this is Hershel speaking, how can I help you?”
Which reminds me, I really need to have a talk with him about whether or not my domicile is his laboratory, because-spoiler alert-it’s not.
Anyway.
His end of the conversation went a little like this:
“Ah!  Wonderful wonderful.
I’ll be right over.
Yes, I noticed the spiders.
Well, I’m wearing boots.
I don’t see how that’s-
I don’t mind squishing them!
Ok, then I won’t squish them.
I’ll walk lightly.
No, really lightly.
Alright, I’ll shoe them.
By making a shoe-ing noise.
I don’t know a noise spiders hate.
Like an elephant.
Because it would stomp them.
No, I think it will work.
Well, have you ever tried?
Then I hardly think you’re-
You’re right.  I’m sorry.
Alright.
Alright.
Alright.
I’ll tell her.
I love you too.”

He looked at us enthusiastically. “You’ll never guess who that was!”
“we know who it was, Hershel.  It was clearly Lisa.”
He looked at me with his uniquely crazy eyes.  “How did you know?  Witch?”
“No, I’m not a witch.  It was just abundantly clear.  Now what did she have to say?”
He smiled broadly.
“She wants you to call off the dogs!”

a quick word on beasties and portents….

Spider: [spahy-der]

noun

1. an arachnid of the order of Araneae

2. any arachnid loosely resembling such

3. a frying pan

4.  The worst things in the world

 

And now, courtesy of “Why Raise a Stink When you can Raise the Dead!”, a brief word on spiders:

 

“If we know you-and let us be frank here, all of us, we most certainly do-you have grown impatient, waiting for us to address the obvious elephant in the room, the ever popular subject of beasties and portents. You might say, and not entirely incorrectly, that those are two separate but equal elephants, and here we are, egg all over our face, having only accounted for one. But recall, that if you are not entirely incorrect, well, the rules of science dictate that you are not entirely correct either. Before you throw your hands in the air and protest-we strongly suggest you stop before you even begin-recall that this is not our rule, it is science’s, and what are we if not men of science? Women of science, that’s what. These are the only two options, should you wish to continue in the VERY SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE of necromancy, so before we go any further, we shall allow you to ascertain whether or not you are a man or woman of science. The man or woman part is irrelevant to us, except that we truly and genuinely hope you have already determined this. If you have not, it’s entirely possible that you a) are not cut out for a field that requires some basic level of anatomical understand and b) are incredibly stupid. So we retract. We will allow you instead 2 moments, first to ascertain whether or not you are a man or woman of science, and second to ascertain whether or not you are incredibly stupid. We urge you to be very honest in this assessment. You may choose the order.

Now, having allotted a new paragraph to the previously alluded to considerations, we assume going forward that you are a non-idiot man/woman of science. Very good. And as such, we ask you to travel back in time, one full paragraph and a few sentences ago, when you were younger, more hopeful, had a few more minutes of life and a few less regrets, to when we discussed elephants. The point we were getting at is that in this business beasties and portents are so closely connected as to be interchangeable. You have your doubts, and we understand that.
Consider the black cat. It is a beastie whose status as a portent has become so ubiquitous as to influence even those who do not believe in the ill effects of that particular nefarious feline. After entire minutes of scientific study, we have determined that the only crime of the black cat-the only power of the black cat-is having been born black. Which, we think you’ll agree, is truly more a crime of biology. If you do not agree with this, you are foolish and wrong. Please absent yourself from our remaining pages.
Let us move forward, then, assuming you-still present in mind, if not body-understand this on some primal level. Kitty’s got nothing against you, and the power of his fur is not charged with the spit of Lucifer. It’s just a cat. A cat who happens to be black. The power of that cat rests entirely in legend. In myth. But make no mistake. This is power.
Oh, kitty, if only you knew the magic you walk in, the incredible strength and power that comes with nothing you have done, nothing you will do, nothing you can do-only what people believe you are, and the foolishness they might inflict on themselves in the process!
This, as a necromancer, which is a VERY SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE, is something you must be very aware of. You are dealing with dead things. And spoiler alert, dead things attract gross things. It is entirely possible you are one such gross thing. We are not here to judge. But this is what we are dealing with; this is the scientific principal at the very heart of the beast; it is not magic, this element. We shall table magic till another chapter, as you already know you are magic but not why (should you find yourself impatient, please refer to chapter: “So you think you’re magic…”). Let us not cross the streams here. There is a very basic principal that calls the gross, the vulgar, the disgusting, the all-together, thoroughly icky, to your new hobby. It is mere attraction. Have you ever watched a horrifying scene from a movie that’s just completely mortifying and disgusting? Well, well…enjoy throwing your piles of rocks at the centipedes glass house, jerk. The basic rule of thumb, and this is the important thing to take away, is that the more hideous, repulsive and altogether horror-inducing the creature, the better you are doing at necromancing the shit out of some corpses.
So let us discuss the spider.
Science has proven what cavemen first suggested subtly on their walls in the blood and feces of whatever god-forsaken elephant creature lived simultaneous to them; that spiders are just the worst. They are disgusting and not to be trusted. It takes alot for a spider to get a thrill-understand, these are creatures that shoot silk out of their asses and eat their prey alive. They are terrible people. And so, their hideous, spider stomachs are incredibly strong. And they want to see what you are doing. It is primitive. It is, literally, the exact same scientific principal* that draws a magnet to your refrigerator door. Spiders, while disgusting, horrible and in constant need of a good squishing, are a good sign for you, the necromancer.

*Editor’s note: We at Pembleton Publishing have agreed to allow a lot of dubious accuracy into this particular book, feeling that a general suspension of the rules of reality may be necessary when the question is “Necromancy”. However; we feel it is imperative to point out to the public at large-both so they are not woefully misinformed, and so that they may use their own judgment to assess the general degree of reliability inherent in the authors of this work-to point out that this is neither true nor accurate. Not even close.”

Boys and girls….
it’s been a long day.

How Soon is Now?

I woke up this morning-always a good way to start the day-feeling strangely calm.  Stupidly calm.  It remains remarkable to me how quickly the completely absurd and outlandish can become your commonplace.  There must be a transitory period, a gradual progression…a baby doesn’t just one day discover “hey, now, what’s this?  These strange noises I and others are making with our tongues really make sense now!  I get it!  All mysteries revealed!”.  It’s gradual, right?  I assume it is, I really can’t remember being pre-linguistic.  But even so…I think there must be a moment, a fast one, where it all just sort of…clicks.  And it’s your new normal.
And ok, sometimes that new normal involves blood spiders running amok in the streets.  And your very own hell hounds turning half human and jumping out second story windows to devour said spiders.  These are things that happen!
At least now they are.
Because they did.
That was a recap, in case you skipped me yesterday.
But from here on out, I’m assuming that if you did not read, in real time, that you have done the courteous thing and gone back, educated yourself.  Or maybe you don’t have to.  The possibility has arisen.
Strangely enough, it was Hershel who brought it up, in an unexpectedly astute moment.
We were duct taping triple thick layers of seran wrap over the the window, lest any disgusting, vile, disgusting, horrible, disgusting, eight-legged, disgusting spiders decided to get brave and let themselves in, when Hershel said:  “You know, spiders are like vampires, you have to invite them in.”
This was not his unexpectedly astute moment.
“Spiders are not like vampires, Hershel.  Spiders fear nothing.  They are godless.  They are vicious.  They are the absolute embodiment of evil on earth.  Also, they are not fictitious.”
“Says you!”
“Says science!”
Liam ahem-ed, a special talent of his, in a tone that seemed to say “I’m above all of this, but let me dip my toes in, just for funzies.”
“I’m going to suggest”, he said, “That we don’t really need to trust either Karen or science.  We can just look out the window and see that there are spiders literally everywhere.  They are everywhere. And in order for them to be everywhere, they must, in fact, be real.”
Hershel smiled and slapped Liam’s back.  “That’s using the old noodle!”
I sighed.  The argument seemed a bit too simplistic….I mean, I could have pointed out that spiders aren’t fictitious, because hey look spiders, but I assumed we were not working on such basic levels of logic.  I often think Hershel chooses his techniques strictly to see what will madden me quickest.
Another patented Liam ahem.  I assume this is what they teach in Priest school.  Nothing but exorcisms and self-important ahems.  Actually, Priest school doesn’t sound so bad that way….
“So, motion to agree that spiders exist and are not, in fact, like vampires?”
“Seconded.”
“Abstain.”
“Motion carried.”
Hershel humphed and harumphed a bit, but understood he’d been fundamentally out-politiced.  Which left him only one recourse….
“A filibuster!”
“NO! NO! NO filibuster!  Let us never forget the great raisin wine filibuster!”
Hershel smiled.  “I’ve already forgotten, but I’m sure I was brilliant, and infinitely right.”
Liam raised an eyebrow.  “Raisin wine?  That’s….well, it’s not a thing.”
I threw my hands to the heavens, a gesture that I’ve perfected in being-Hershel’s-friend School.  All A’s.  “Of course it’s not a thing.”
Hershel shook his head.  “It’s a thing.”
“It’s not.”
“We used to drink it.”
“You didn’t.”
“It tasted like vinegar.”
“That’s just old wine!”
“AHA!  Felled by your own logic!  Because old wine is old grapes and old grapes are raisins.”
I was about to point out that that was stupid and wrong, but Liam held up a hand and gave me a look.  A sort of “live to fight another day” glance.
Fine, Hershel.  This point, you.
He stretched, cleared his throat, scratched, and looked for a good filibuster thought.  And then he said:
“Hey wait a minute.  These spiders….wasn’t there one in those roses the Mouse sent you?”
A moment of unexpected astuteness. I had forgotten.
I nodded.  “I think there was.  It was dead, wasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid you two are a bit ahead of me”, Liam said.  “The Mouse sent you roses?”
“He did….”
He sat down hard on the floor.  He looked far more affected by the news than I would have expected.  “Does he contact you often?”
“Never, really.”
Liam gestured out the window.  “I think he has now.”
We put our noses up to the clear wrap, fogged it up with our breath, the three of us, waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. What we saw instead was a steady spray of blood, as the beasts, my protectors, tore through the spiders, eating them with glee and rampant delight.
“They’re like kibble to those damn dogs….”
Liam tapped my shoulder.  “Right.  Um…also, about the dogs….what are they?”
“They are…unusual.”
“Yes, that part I picked up on.”
Maybe because he was taking this all a little too in stride, but for the first time, I looked at Liam.  Really looked at him.  And I said “Who are you?”
His mouth gaped for a second, then he closed it.  He considered the question (I assume.  You see, these are the assumptions we make.  But do I know?  Of course not.  He might have been considering whether or not those spiders tasted like chocolate chips, or thinking he could really go for a glass of raisin wine <dammit, Hershel, get out of my head!>).
And then he said:  “Now.  For right now, I am exactly what you and who you think I am.  But there was a time….a really strange time in my life….when I was a little more feral.  A little closer to them….I think?”
Hershel patted Liam’s shoulder with slow sympathy. “No, Liam, you weren’t.  You were never remotely like them.  Nothing has ever been like them.  And nothing ever was or ever will be like what you were.  It was….well, it doesn’t matter.  It was a long time ago.”
Liam got a dazed look on his face.  “Sometimes….it’s not a long time ago.  Sometimes it’s just a minute ago.  Or a second.  Sometimes it’s now.  Like it’s still somehow inside of me.  Or is it dreams?”
He looked to Hershel, and I found myself wondering, and I feel it still, how it is that Hershel knows so much and still has such an impossible capacity for bullshit.  I think perhaps the two are symbiotic.  Hershel can believe anything because he can make up anything.  What he wants to be real is real, and so there is not limit to reality. He has invaded, conquered, destroyed the possibility of impossibility. And for all his unparalleled crassness, there is the love.  The compassion and sweetness that moved him to say:
“If it would be better for it to be dreams, let it be dreams.  It is past.  And you are you and I am me, and Karen is Karen.  You are ok.  Now.  Let’s focus.”
I shrugged.  “Not a lot we can do….”
Liam perked up a little.  “We can try to find out….well, if this is happening anywhere else.  Do you have any…I don’t know…contacts?…in the outside world?”
I shook my head, then stopped.  “There’s Eleanor.  She might be reading this, and she might respond.  She knows my password-she could answer in blog.”
(Side note: She has not yet.  Perhaps and probably because I’m ONLY WRITING THIS NOW.  Wait to drop the ball, Karen.)
Hershel pounded his fist on the table manically.  “And there’s Michael!  The esteemed president of my fan club.”
“You have a fan club?”
“He does not have a fan club.”
“I totally have a fan club!  Proof?  There is a president to my fan club.  What would be the purpose of having a president to a fan club that doesn’t exist.  Motion to agree I have a fan club!”
Liam hesitantly said “There’s a certain, idiot logic to it….”
“Thank you.”
“Motion seconded.”
“Motion carried!”
“He called you an idiot, you know.”
“He called my logic idiotic.  There’s a difference.”
These are the battles I lose….
“Alright.  So we’ll contact Mike and Eleanor…”
(Sorry guys, late, late….but you know, better late than never, right? Suuuure…..)
“But what now?”
And we all, as if on the same timer, turned and looked at Monsterman…..
Hershel rubbed his hands together and said, “Now….”

When the tigers broke free

Is there a too far?  And if there is, is there any chance of knowing before we got there, so we could stand on the precipice, stick our thumbs in our ears, extend our tongues to their very roots and waggle obnoxiously at the monsters just over the line-you called, you beckoned, but we were too clever, we were too quick.  We are on to you?
Well, it doesn’t really matter, because if there is a too far, we are all kinds of in it now.  Break out your cartography pencils, boys, because this, well, this is highly uncharted. And such a poor navigator, I.
I would hardly trust me to lead this venture.
“And we’re not…we’re trust me.”
“Stop reading over my shoulder.  It’s rude.”
“It’s rude to write while you’ve got guests.”
“Guests?  Guests?  Really?  You’ve been up here for 5 days, you are no longer guests.  You’re squatters.”
And there’s a sudden purring, loud and warm, and it fills the entire room.  The kitten, who has been quiet for days, who has barely strayed from Monsterman’s lap, is positively vibrating.  He is happy.
The little shit.
This is no time for happiness, we are in a hell of a mess.
“I’m sort of enjoying it.”
“Of course you are, Hershel.  You would.  You would just LOVE this.”
He pats his expansive belly.  His appetite has clearly not curbed since the spiders have come and I must say, the man is veritably eating us out of house and diner.
But I think I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ve been behind on writing this down, because I’ve been hell-bent, determined, absolutely positive and certain that if I put my mind to it long enough and hard enough, well, I could figure out what in blue hell is going on.  That’s step one.  I can’t even wrap my head around step 2: why (the revenge of step 1!), it simply lacks the elasticity.  I’m afraid if I attempted such a trick, my brain would snap like a rubber band.  It requires a borderline insane degree of mental acrobatics, and I hung up my spangly suit and trapeze years ago.  I quit the business, you see.
It just keeps pulling me back in.
Well, fine.  One last job.
“This is your method?  I find it highly unproductive.  And also you were never in the circus.”
“It’s figurative, duuuuh.”
Liam, who has been rather quiet the past few days, looks up.  “Did you say duh?”
“Did who?”
“Did you?”
“Say what?”
“Say duh.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“Just now?”
“YES.”
“Did I?”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’ve been reduced to. Low level torment of a perfectly harmless priest, asking a perfectly valid question.
“He’s not really that harmless.”
“Sure I am.”
“Well, maybe you are now…”
“Now is the tense we’re using.”
“Is it?  Are you sure?”
“Karen, check the record.”
Oh right.  That’s the other reason I haven’t been writing.  I have started and abandoned many a blog post, because of the number of times I’ve been called upon to “check the record”.  You might counter-it would be so very like you-that I could just not write down everything that’s being said, or happening.
Nuts to that.
That’s the entire purpose of keeping this blog!
But let us get down to brass tacks, or rather to return to them, because I believe we have completed the descent.  I’m going to tell you a what, and demand that you not ask a why or a how, not even in your mind, because those questions don’t matter any more, they can’t for now. We can look no further beyond “what” than “next”, no other questions are even reasonable at this point.
A return to how would be welcome, and should it come, I will welcome it as Noah must have at the end of that flood-a chance to get out of a sinking boat loaded with various fucking (the verb, here, not the adjective.  Let us acknowledge our obscenities, and make them work for us!) animals and their shit.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
“A little late in the game for that….”
“How so?”
“Well…you’re in the present tense at a point where you have no right to be.  You’re sending out a message in a bottle…and assuming I guess that the rest of the world is going through similar things that we are.  But why?  We haven’t seen a newspaper in….how long?”
10 days.  The news stopped coming even before the spiders came.
And now, let us discuss the spiders.
“At last!”
“Shut up Hershel!”
He pats my arm.  “That’s rude, but you’re cranky.”
“I’m not cranky.”
I’m extremely cranky.
“Ah, see, there you admitted to it.”
“Stop reading over my shoulder!”
“No.  But I will at least stop editorializing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Smart girl.”
So.  Forging ahead.  And remembering that we do not ask “why”.  We do not believe in “why”.  We are “why”theists.
5 days ago, Liam, Hershel and I were academically studying Monsterman.  He’s been looking a little rough around the edges, and make no mistake-his edges were not so smooth to begin with.
“Pickling”, Hershel had suggested.  “I think we need to pickle him.”
I sighed.  “I don’t see either how we could do that, or what good it would do.”
He smiled, robustly, the only way he ever bothered smiling.  “Luckily I always carry a jar of Kosher Spears around with me…”, and reaching into his absurd fanny pack, withdre-
“Excuse me, but there is nothing absurd about my fanny pack.”

<–not absurd, at all…
“It’s bedazzled!  But more than that, it’s a fanny pack!”
“It’s practical.  And stylish.”
“And you’re too round for it to span, so you have to use it like a purse.”
“I’m ahead of my time.”
“You told me yesterday you were behind your time!”
“That is the dream….”
“You said no more editorializing.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“I will.”
“You won’t.”
“I won’t.”
He won’t.  So I better try to get this out a little quicker.
So anyway.
How he managed to fit a jar of pickles that size into a fanny pack, is beyond me.  How he managed to additionally wedge in box of crackers and a wheel of cheese is nothing short of miraculous.
But goddammit, he did it.

<–THIS JAR!! In that fanny pack!  Physics has been destroyed….

Liam looked more than a little nervous.
“Ok, we see that you have pickles.  What…uh…what are you suggesting we do from here?”
“Three easy and obvious words.  Pickle. Juice. Massage.”
I threw my hands up.  “FOR WHAT PURPOSE?!”
Hershel smiled his usual indulgent smile.  “To preserve the ruggedly handsome beast.”
“This is a stupid idea.”
Liam nodded.  “It is…but…well….I mean, so far the whole thing’s been pretty stupid, right?  At this point, I don’t see how we have any choice besides chasing down every stupid idea.  just really….seeing them through.  And if it fails, well, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Two things.  One: my apartment smells like pickle juice, in addition to all the other just lovely and unique aromas wafting through it these days.  Two: Monsterman looks even more like a main dish to the Huckleberries.”
They knew I was talking about them…or they knew I was talking about food, it’s hard to say which, because they rolled onto their backs, and displayed their enormous fat doggy bellies, as if to say “We haven’t eaten in 3 minutes!  Help us!”.  Hershel often does this as well.
“I’th thdoo Noth…”
“He said through a mouth full of crackers.  I don’t think you should be eating that cheese…or those pickles….”
“Hmph!”
Oh good.  The silent treatment.  That oughta buy me some time!
Herschel had just unscrewed the cap to the pickles, and we were tentatively preparing to dip our fingers into the brine, when we heard it.  A fast rushing sound, like wind through a tree.  And they were there.  Everywhere…moving through the street, climbing on top of each other, scuttling, scurrying.  Too many spiders to even begin to count.  Too many spiders to see individually.  Each red and strangely fluid, so the street looked like a pulsing, rushing wave of blood.  They were huge, and they were climbing on each others’ backs….the current crested at the top of a fire hydrant.  And there was no visible border.  North, south, east, west; the eye could only see spider. And before I could even properly say “What the fuck?”, the Huckleberries turned.
These giant, gentle creatures remembered that they were, what they were, and reared back on their haunches, bared their teeth.  Their thick hides split, and little patches of smooth skin showed through; this one ivory, that one a deep chocolate, a veritable United Nations of were-hell-hound-ery.  Their legs stretched, thickened, but their ears remained pointed, their teeth, sharp, canine.  Tuft of fur remained, and I tried not to notice the thick pieces of pelt that fell off in chunks with a soft splat.  The painful howls they left out shook the walls; their pain cracked the foundation.  Their claws fell out in bloody heaps and their front legs took on the appearance of arms.  Yet they remained in the low crouched posture of a predator.
Liam and Hershel had immediately and automatically formed a barrier in front of me and pressed me back against the wall.  But the Huckleberries did not notice us.  They sniffed the air, and then one fierce, strange creature reared back and sprinted straight through the window and down into the street below, quickly engulfed by the mass of spiders. The other Huckleberries quickly followed suit.
And they began to clean up.

Just like starting over.

I’m still here.
I know I won’t have the time to say everything I want to say, everything I’ve been saying in my head every day.  You see, I’ve developed an odd habit of narrating my actions….it adds a fun element of drama, I confess.

She walked into the kitchen.  There was a growling in her stomach.  
She was hungry.
She looked around her, noticed she was, alone, as alone as a woman who lived with approximately a million hell hounds could ever possibly be.
Which isn’t, in fact, fantastically alone.
Never the less, she had developed a rapport with the creatures, and felt certain they wouldn’t judge her.  She never had the same confidence with the corgi or the cat.  
They were critical.
Still, she decided to brave it. Throw caution to the wind.
She ate a cookie.

Do you see what I’m getting at here?  I can’t just do a goddamn thing, I have to build it.  It’s terribly, dreadfully annoying.  It’s amazing I get anything finished.

Anyway.  the point is, I’ve never stopped writing this blog in my head, but unfortunately,my fingers have done a pretty poor job of keeping up, and they’re really where the money is, don’t you think?
But I don’t want you to forget about me, and I don’t want to forget, so I’m making what I’ll call a place holder.  Because, ya know, it’ll hold my place.  Pretty creative, right?
Tonight we are having an earnest discussion.  A thorough conversation regarding the what the hells we’re going to do.  And I need time.  Time to think through what I’m going to say.  Of a good defense of why Monsterman should stay with me.  Of a reason why it might not seem crazy that I’ve bought an enormous set of bellows, and pump a little life into him each day.  About any sane way to prove that it’s working.

But we’ll talk about that all tomorrow.

In the meantime….
I’m still here.

Open Your Eyes.

I’m prepared to address the elephant, someone’s got to, for Christ’s sake. Let us not be bad hosts, it’s hot and there’s nary a swimming hole in site. The least we can do for our be-trunk-ed friend is acknowledge his giant ass, because who are we kidding, we see him, we see him, he’s not going anywhere, we see him, goddammit! Hello, elephant, hello! Welcome!
So.
Where the hell have I been?
As fate would have it, I’ve been here, the whole time here. Sometimes things just get kind of away from you, and there’s no really great reason for it, it just kind of happens. And that is the shittiest excuse I could possibly give, but it’s also the most honest. Shall I lie? I could, you know. I certainly have. I could have said anything, and it would almost have been like it really happened to me….like I spent the elapsed time doing something wonderful instead of attending “waitress school”, a one on one course inspired by my meteoric rise from “world’s worst waitress” to “universe’s worst waitress”, attendance: 2. Larry, in his infinite kindness, decided to invite Hershel to attend as well, so I wouldn’t feel bad. That’s right, the presence of my geriatric homeslice, experience waiting tables: zero. Desire to wait tables: some, actually. Hershel has, on more than one occasion, gone full vigilante on waiting tables, allegedly to demonstrate how bad I am at it, but really, mostly because he likes the aprons. On the first day we were bad students. By the time Liam started hanging around (we’re like a drug….we leave your tongue kind of thick and weird, but oddly enough, a few days later, well, why not have some more?) we were terrible students. Larry threw his hands up and said “Fine! I don’t care! Just try to do better! No, I take it back, don’t try! Do better! Just do better! Ok?”
I slammed my fist on the table. “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”
“Why in the world should I have to?”
“You shouldn’t! I’m just a terrible waitress!”
Hershel nodded sagely. “She really is.”
Larry wheeled around to face him. “And YOU, old man….YOU are a bad influence!”
Hershel smiled and patted his stomach. “Now, now….”
Liam shrugged. “Well, you invited him…”
“And who invited YOU?! You’re a priest! You should know better! Also, why are you here?”
Liam shrugged. “Looked fun.”
Which was obviously a lie, and I’m not sure about the rules for these guys, but I’m pretty sure priests aren’t supposed to lie. Liam’s priestly credibility slips a little more every day. On the other hand, the man can drink like a fish, so that seems pretty legit.
Anyway.
Larry sighed. “You guys….Karen, you know your job is safe. But please, for me….try a little harder.”
I nodded. Larry was a good guy, a great guy really, and his biggest mistake had been taking any kind of a chance with me, when that chance involved carrying more than one plate and remembering…well, pretty much anything.
Memory has never been a friend to me. Our history is too bleak.
“I promise I’ll try.”
Larry, haunted most consistently by a nature too sweet and too kind to exist comfortably in this world, patted my hand. “I know you will. Now get out of here, the lot of you!”
But we are the kind of people who push our luck, and Larry knew it, so he instantly began our fries. We believe why stop at injury, when you can so easily have insult too?
Over the spoils of our labors, we discussed the Monsterman situation. To whit: the debate over whether his eyes had been open before the surgery or if that was a new development. Propelled as always by a combustion engine full of skepticism and doubt, I went strongly with “Nope. Old news.”
Hershel, I’m sure it will come as no surprise, was entirely convinced that these open eyes were a sign of a very slooooooowly developing consciousness.
I didn’t tell him that every night, before I got to bed, I close those eyes.
Every morning, I wake up and they are open.
Hershel believes now, more than anything else, that we need the assistance of the mysterious Mike Dorkbutt. It feels strange to take a man seriously who goes by the handle “Dorkbutt”, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. Let us deal with him accordingly.
“You heard what Liam said….”
I nodded. “Sure, I heard what Liam said. Liam said alot of things that night that I heard….”
Liam shrugged. “In my defense….I’d just had most of my blood drained and was drunk off my proverbial ass.”
“Fair play.”
Hershel shook his head. “Not good enough.”
“Not good enough? What’s not good enough is a drunk, barely alert priest saying he saw a guy who fit some of the criteria Mr. The Dorkbutt described in his responses at a revival meeting in Mississippi. Additionally, what’s not good enough is that what he saw that miracle worker do in Mississippi was clear up some guy’s athlete’s foot.”
Liam, now a little cagey, said “Athlete’s foot is a very annoying condition, Karen. Don’t under-estimate it.”
Hershel clapped his hand enthusiastically on Liam’s shoulder. “That it is, my boy, that it is.”
And before either of us could stop him (surprisingly agile, is this 9 million and 10 year old man, WHEN HE CHOOSES TO BE), he had his shoe and sock off and was proudly demonstrating his alarmingly fat right foot.
“Now you tell me that’s not the foot of a real athlete.”
“An athlete, Hershel? When we go from the diner to my apartment, you have to stop 3 times, and at least one of those times is always you saying you’re not going to make it, and I should go on without you.”
Hershel looked at me blankly, which I really should have predicted. “Your point?”
“I live upstairs.”
“It’s alot of stairs.”
“It’s ten stairs.”
“They’re steep.”
“They’re really not.”
Liam sighed. “Look, I enjoy debating how out of shape Hershel is as much as the next guy-I’m really spending too much time with you two-but would it be out of line to table this discussion until AFTER Hershel’s put his sock and shoe, or barring that, at very least his sock, back on his disgusting, hideous fat foot?”
“It really is quite fat isn’t it?”
Hershel pulled his sock back on. “It’s not fat, it’s big boned.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s muscle weight.”
“Also not that.”
“Well, you try exercising your feet.”
Liam reached across the table and quite chummily rubbed Hershel’s great belly. “My friend, I doubt you’ve ever exercised anything besides your prodigious mouth.”
I spit out the water I had been drinking and Hershel said “Kids these days….”
I coughed, hacked, generally made a scene, then regained my composure.
“So your driving thesis, if I may get us back on track…is that Monsterman has come alive, but you still want this shyster shaman-“
“We really have no reason to call him a shaman-“
“-I know, I just wanted alliteration. Anyway, you still want him to come and do…what? You seem to think you’ve already succeeded in the whole resurrection nonsense.”
Hershel pounded one fist into the other palm. “But it’s taking so long! I figure, double your efforts, double the speed of him wooing Julie Newmarstein!”
Liam abruptly and brilliantly started to smile.
We gave him our inquisitive eyes, and one of us said “What?”
“It’s just….I find something weirdly soothing about your weirdness. I spent such along thing thinking that the strangeness in my life was so unique. And you know, there are all these ways you want to be unique, but sometimes more than you want to be unique, you want to know that someone at all even sort of understands what you’re going through. How you’re feeling. You don’t want to be alone in pain, I guess is the thing.”
Hershel and I glanced at each other. Liam isn’t terribly forthcoming with details about his life, and though a) I know Hershel knows more than I do and b) you could hardly call the above statement a revelation, I took it. As you, more than anyone, should know, I’m the last living scholar in the linguistics of indecipherable men.
Liam caught our subtle (but not so subtle….) glances and looked down. “Let’s go see MonsterHiddleFaceManStein, shall we?”

 

<–Hellhound Halloween Costume?  What say ye!

I wish I was the moon

Well, the cat’s out of the bag, and make no mistake, some cats belong in bags.  They’re comfortable there, all their stuff is there, they’ve pissed in each corner and made it their own, and they like their bag quite a lot, thank you very much.  But the smartest cat is still pretty stupid, especially drained of blood and more than a little drunk on very expensive whiskey, and let’s just take all of the cards from out of our sleeves and put them on my pretty table, please, a little bit off of leftover peppermint schnapps, and that drunk, drained, idiot cat will stumble out of it’s comfy sack-home at the first peak of daylight.  Of course, if you’re very lucky, the cat will leap right into the arms of a recently anemiced, equally (or close to) drunk priest, who will lovingly put it in a surprisingly full bag of his own.

I will pick up comfortably now, approximately where I left off, no longer hampered, hindered, holstered by the allegations of real time, perfectly content to work with false time, dishonest minutes, scheming hours.  Let’s see, where did I leave off….blah blah blah, I killed him, and there:

Liam rolled his head as far over my shoulder as he could, to try and look into my eyes.
“You wha?”
I considered the virtues of lying, found them myriad, but before I had a chance to act on them, Hershel spoke.  He had-as is so often his way-lulled us into a false sense of confidence by napping loudly.  We hadn’t noticed that the various gurgles, snorts, mumbles and bumbles had stopped until he spoke.
“You heard her”, he said, and looked at me gently.  “But I don’t know that murdered is exactly the right word.”
I shrugged.  “Well….I took actions not merely knowing that they would result in his death, but explicitly to bring about that…um…result.”
Hershel smiled.  “Well, that leaves a hell of a lot of lee way.  I mean…who among us hasn’t done just that?”
Liam raised his hand.
I looked at Hershel.  “When have you ever?”
“Oh never.  But I’ve done the opposite.”
“What….wait, what is the opposite of all those things I just said?”
Hershel indicated Monsterman with his head.  “That.”
“I don’t know that that’s true….”
Liam nodded.  “Yeah, it’s not.  The opposite of murder is un-murder.”
Un-murder sounded like a made-up concept to me, but I’m open minded, always intrigued by new philosophies and totally prepared to accept a well-stated idea.
“Un-murder’s not a thing.  You just made that shit up.”
Liam started to nod, but his head only made it to down-apparently up was too much of an effort.
“Un-murder’s…uh….it’s when you undo dead.”
Hershel threw his hands out.  “That’s what I’m saying!”
Liam sort of bounced up and down, a new way of nodding, effective enough I guess, but I wouldn’t buy stock in it.  “Yeah, yeah, but see….for it to be the opposite, well, murder is intentional, right?  So to really be the opposite, it would have to be undoing dead accidentally.”
“I think any successes Hershel ever has with undoing death can be called pretty purely accidental.”
Hershel huffed.  “If you want to call science accidental, than sure, yes, it’s accidental.”
“Right, so-”
“BY WHICH I MEAN!! Of course it’s not accidental.”
“Well then”, I said, waving my hands a little manically, “It sounds like it’s not un-murder.”
“According to his definition of un-murder”, Hershel said, indicating Liam with his head.  “Who made you such an authority on un-murder?”
Liam pointed at himself with one thumb.  “I did.”
I think leveler heads would have argued this-granted, cogent-piece of rhetoric, but as we were currently engaged in a debate about the precise definition of a word that doesn’t exactly exist, and constantly forgetting who was on who’s side, it seemed pretty damn compelling at the time.  Who are you to judge us?
“Honestly, it’s all sort of moot, because MonsterHiddleFaceManStein-”
Liam bounced enthusiastically.  “Oooh, I like that one!”
“Me too!  But it’s too long.  Anyway, not alive yet.”
Hershel shook his head in a way that could readily and accurately be labeled “condescending”, and so it shall be, even though the very notion chaps my ass in ways and colors I never thought possible.
“Hiddlestein is chock full of your delicious, nubile blood.  There is decidedly a sound coming from his chest.  And he smells like peppermint.”
“I do not believe any of those are pre-requisites to being alive.  Also, why was it just our blood?  Shouldn’t you have offered some too?”
“Because I did all the REAL work.”
“I feel like being drained dry was at least sort of work…”
“You just SAT there….”
Liam abruptly flailed his arms. The Huckleberry in his lap put a giant paw on his forearm, as if to say “It’s ok, bro.  Calm the fuck down.”
“I would like to rewind for a moment.  I am not judging per say, because I do not have all the…uh…all the information.  But did you or did you not say you murdered a man, true or false!?”
“Those are two separate questions…”
Liam sighed.  “Excuse me.  I have 7 remaining drops of blood cycling through my veins, and you made me drink a quarter of a bottle of whiskey-”
“Made?! A quarter of a bottle?!  You’d better check both your word choice and your math, buddy.”
“I will not!  Do either of those things!  I will request that you explain yourself.”
“I decline.  I’ve said too much.”
“Exactly.  You’ve already said too much, so what’s the harm in saying a little more?”
“He’s kind of got you there.”
“Thank you, Hershel.  Invaluable as usual.”
He smiled.  “Oh, I know.  Look, Father Priest, don’t worry.  She didn’t so much murder the guy as set the fire that murdered him.  The fire is the real murderer here!”
“The culprit!”
Even in my state, I understood that the Priest should not be accepting that as a reasonable explanation.  The fact that he was worried me more than a little.
“Maybe we should take you to a hospital….”
“No no no….you know….I have this dream…I am running through the woods….maybe naked…I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.  And I can taste blood in my mouth, but I like the taste, I want the taste.  But there is a part of my brain that remembers to be appalled by that.  But it’s such a quiet part….But all of my parts, every unified part, is running to her.  I know I had to find her.  I have to get to her, and the part of my brain that whispers and the part of my brain that screams, they fight and disagree about everything in the world except that.  On that they completely agree.  And I get to the porch, and the door opens….”
Abruptly, Liam swerved around, so I fell flat on my back, and faced Hershel.  “Is she there, Hershel?  Is she opening the door?”
Hershel stood up and put a hand very gently on Liam’s head.  “I wish she was, dear boy.”
It was the strangest moment.  And that is both saying something, and probably false.  But it was certainly a strange moment.  Liam is self-contained, self-possessed, self-assured.  But with Hershel’s hand tenderly on the top of his hair, he truly was just a dear little boy.  Scared.  Alone.  But mostly, deeply, desperately sad.  He closed his eyes and fell sideways onto the Huckleberry, who adjusted himself and wrapped one monstrous, hell-houndy arm around him, spooning the sweet, fallen creature deep into his furry tummy.
I looked at Hershel.  “You know, I think I had a semi-normal life before I met you.”
“Nah.  You didn’t.  And what’s so abnormal about this?  We have some time, spell it out for me.”
I gesticulated, because gesturing was not sufficient for my purpose.
“You don’t see anything odd….about….well, let’s go clockwise, shall we?  There is currently a naked Monsterman with a metronome in his chest cavity, a bunch of blood from myself and a Priest in his veins, and, if I do say so myself, an enormous peepers laying on my table.”
“You already knew about the enormous peepers.  You helped me pick it out.”
“I was against it.”
“Bah.  It’s all pretty standard science.”
“And what about this?  A drunk, drained Priest cuddled up with an obese hell hound?  Shouldn’t one of them burst into flames or something?”
“Well…in their defense….he’s not a very good priest.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I am an excellent judge of priests.”
“You’re Jewish.”
“Yeah, but you can tell.  I mean, he helped with this little endeavor.”
“You brow-beat him into it….”
“Well, sure…”
I looked at Liam’s face….it is an undeniably pretty face, despite the scars.  Nothing like Oliver’s with the square jaw line and perfect cheekbones.  Nothing like yours, with the shades angles and geometric precision.  A little softer.  Almost cherubic.  Innocent.
“What’s his story, anyway?”
Hershel patted my hand.
“I’ll tell you some time.  But not tonight.  Hey any word back from Michael of the rich Dorkbutt line?”

Oh shit.

Under a honeymoon

I’m a little behind.  I have a reason, and I’m tempted to call it “good”, but that qualification, that adjective….who can really say, right?  Who is the grand arbiter of a good reason versus a bad reason?  Is the question not circumstantial?  Let us not throw stones, let us not turn this into some sort of tribunal by fire, let us save our dragons for a rainy day, so say I!
I’ve lost the thread.  My good reason.
My good reason is that I had written a post that I wanted to put up, but had lost to my hard drive.  Swallowed into the belly of my dear, evil laptop.  Well, let’s be fair.
The laptop may not have been to blame.  
The good news is that after a relatively extensive and wildly time consuming search, I have located the post.
The bad news is I’m not entirely sure it was worth the effort. 
That said, the effort was expelled, and once must respect that, so. Here it is.  Let us move forward from here.

It’s a honeymoon, a full moon, and I’m writing in real time, even as it all happens.  I am sitting with my back pressed against Priest Liam, and I am, it seems, owing to a combination of sleep deprivation, alcohol intake and a rather low bloodening, speaking every word I write out loud.
“Most of the words you write.  And bloodening is not a word.”
Liam’s head kind of rolls around when he speaks, probably because he also has been bloodgeoned (see what I did there?)-
“It was a bad pun.”
Am I still writing out loud?
“Yes, yes you are.”
Let me shift gears.  There we go.
“Well, now I want to know what you’re writing.”
“I just wrote ‘well now I want to know what you’re writing.'”
“So you’re writing what I’m saying?”
“As you’re saying it.”
“Why?  Why would you do that?”
“To create an accurate and factual representation of the events of tonight.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Why not?”
I can feel him shrug, which is all the concession.  I need.  I’ve won.
“So you’re…what?  Talking about the operation?”
“Yep.”
“How far are you?”
“I’ve gotten to about five minutes ago.”
“Oh so you’re done.”
“I started at five minutes ago.”
“So you’re nowhere.”
“Well, not nowhere, I’m here.”
“Why is it taking you so long?”
“Because you keep interrupting me.”
“So stop writing everything I say!”
“I can’t do that.”
“Fine, I’ll be quiet.”
That’s what he says.  We shall see.  The Priest has been rambling wildly, perhaps an end result of not being able to hold his liquor quite as well as one might expect someone from his storied profession to, but let us not count out the pint or so of blood he’s down.  Fella’s looking pale.  
It is, I believe, worth noting, for history, for posterity, for the ages (can we take a moment to marvel at how well I’m handling this punctuation?  Even in my current state, comas are no match for me!) that we never intended, actively, to get drunk.  It was not part of the plan.  
It all started with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. Hershel pulled it out, unopened, pristine, goddamn virginal, to sterilize his “instruments”-a pocket knife, a set of tweezers and a fork-and to disinfect chunks of Monsterman’s skin.  As soon as I was able to glean his intent, I stopped him.
“Oh HELL no, Hershel.  Do you know how expensive that shit is?”
He shrugged.  “I do not. And until the day you can use it in a nice sex on the beach, I do not care.”

                drink of choice of real man’s mens everywhere….
Liam had cracked the door by then, and said “As usual, I have stepped in at what seems to be the weirdest possible time.  The interesting, almost Hitchcokian twist with you two, is that somehow that is EVERY time.  Lucky me.  Please do not explain the sex on the beach comment.”
“Well, I’m going to, because Hershel wants to use Johnnie Walker Blue as a sterilizing agent.  Because it can’t be employed in the making of sexes on the beach.”
“Sex on the beaches.”
“Sexes on the beaches?”
“I don’t think you have to-dammit!  I promised myself, coming in, that I would not engage in any more ridiculous arguments with you…”
Hershel smiled at him.  “Well that was a fool’s promise.”

“Hey.  Hey.”
“Yes, what?”
“What are you writing about now?”
“Well, you’ll be glad to know, I’m making some real headway.”
“Good.  Stay on task.”
“Thanks, boss.”
I’m a little worried about Priestasaurus.  I worry he may not be cut out for this life….Anyway, not to worry about that right now! Back to the story!

“Well, listen, if we don’t use this bottle of Jonathon Walkersville now, I’ll never use it.”
He barely had the sentence out before I had the tumblers out.  “I think, Hershel, with my expansive imagination, I can find a use for it.”
He sighed.  “What will I used to clean my instruments and patient with, hm?”
“Oh, I don’t know-rubbing alcohol?”
“And do you have any?”
Oh, did I neglect to mention this was all happening in my apartment?  On my table? ON MY FUCKING TABLE?!  Because it totally was.  I had fed the Huckleberries everything in the refrigerator, all dosed with a considerable supply of sominex, and though it didn’t quite knock them out, it put them in a sort of dopey stupor.  So any and all movement was hampered by the presence of giant, stumbling fatso hellhounds, tiny glued on hats askew, ramming good naturedly into each other and us.  This was, to say the least, an impediment.
I climbed over them to the bathroom, and quickly ascertained that nay, I had none alcohols.
“Well, then, you’d better come up with an alternative and toot sweet, otherwise, we use the Johnnie Walker.”
I pushed through to the kitchen, big, furry snouts going in places they were certainly never invited, hell, places OLIVER was never invited, and looked through the reserves.  What could be parted with….aha.  Pay dirt.
“I have, in my possession, a barely used bottle of mint schnapps.”
Hershel’s eyes lit up.  “Why that’s perfect!”
I knew I’d get him with those.
Liam slapped his face into his hand.  “Why? Why in the world would that be

“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Yes, you said that already.”
“Is the moon full tonight?”
“Yessir.”
“Vampires.”
“Do not exist.”
“WEREWOLVES!”
“Do not exist.”
I can feel Liam moving his arms, presumably expansively.
“What are these guys then?”
There’s a Huckleberry trying desperately to lay in Liam’s lap, as if he weren’t the size of a Winnebago.  Liam is clumsily, but affectionately slapping his head.  
Liam grabs the hellhounds enormous ears and pulls them out to the side.  “Hey fella, what are you?  And why am I so loopy?”
“Well, I can answer at least one of those.  I suspect you, like myself, were not anticipating giving so much blood to Monsterman.”
“Why in the world did we agree to that?”
“We didn’t.  It’s the Hershel way.  You’re sure you said no, and the next thing you know, he’s got a transfusion tube thinger connecting you to Monsterman.”
“Did not like that.”
“Not at all.”
“I like this dog.”
“Yeah.”

So anyway.  Hershel explained to Liam that: “Peppermint schnapps smell good.  Making them the ideal anti-bacterial. That’s just science.”
“That is not science.”
I put my hands out placatingly, because, let’s be honest, the best possible version of this story ends with Hershel using a bottle of unloved peppermint schnapps and not a 200 plus bottle of whiskey, that should ruin my liver.  “Let’s not get hung up on definitions of science.  We still have a corpse to desecrate.”
“You’ve already desecrated several, it seems.”
“Re-desecrate, then.  Let’s drink.”
The Priest and I set about it with wild abandon, perhaps because neither of us had the real stomach for the business.  Speaking of stomach’s, I held one in my hands tonight.  And it did not fill me with warmth or good feeling.  Hershel just said “Here ya go!”  and thrust it at me.  I’m still not sure why he even bothered to take it out, beyond what he referred to as “a good spring cleaning, since we’re in the neighborhood.”.  Whatever that means…..

“Hey.”
“You’re getting a little redundant.”
“Yeah.”
“So….?”
“Why’s the moon so orangey?”
“It’s a honeymoon.”
“A honeymoon. How romantic.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Hey…”
“Yeah?”
“What did you do on you and Oliver’s honeymoon.”
Should I answer that honestly?  Probably not.  
I’m going to.
“I murdered his brother.”
“Oh.”

Trouble

You’re never fully ready for the moment when every new revelation comes prefaced with “As I get older…”
Well, I shouldn’t speak for you. Maybe you are ready for that moment. Maybe you were born ready for that moment.  Maybe you were just born FOR that moment.  I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
I am not, truly, but I think I can manage it.  There are worse things, give me this quiet little personal apocalypse over the more thunderous, face-melting types I’ve occasionally crossed paths with over the years.
I’m going somewhere with this, but I’m never really moving.  Of course, and I suppose it’s patently, blatantly obvious that where I’ve been headed, since i started this rather short road trip, has naturally been an: As I get older.
And so here it is, for good measure:  As I get older, I find it increasingly essential to hold every moment, raw and unrefined, just as it was.  There was temptation, in my younger youth (I believe I may still stake some sort of claim to youth.  I still have more years to live than that I already have, provided everything goes according to my plans.), to color all my memories with my pinkest crayons.
Memory truly can be the push up bra of the brain.
Sure, you can revise and repair until it’s all perky and, hey, why not a cup size larger in appearance, but some little crease, a warm, tight crevice, will know, because we are not what we appear to be, we are what we are when the clothes and the lies and the bullshit aren’t there to protect us.  We aren’t who other people make us.  We are the capacity we have for tolerance, in those moments alone with ourselves.
You see, I had this memory of a night with Oliver, a party we went to together, where I got uproariously drunk.  When I thought back to the night, I always saw it thus:  Oliver with his arm around me, walking down the middle of the street, as I held my heels in my right hand, and whistled a little melody.  All very idyllic, the cover of a goddamn Bob Dylan album.
It’s how I wanted it to be.
So I cut out the part where I threw up on a fire hydrant, or where the cold of the pavement tore up the skin on my feet, or that Oliver had his arm around me not in affection, but as necessity, to keep me from falling.
The more I remember it, the more of a debacle it was.
Still, I find it weirdly soothing to take the memory and turn it over.  And in times of stress, it’s a calming mechanism.  It’s a rubbing stone for me to focus my energy on.
So when Hershel proposed impromptu surgery on Monsterman, I gripped that memory with all my might.
“I have an idea!”, he said.  (I am catching you up.  Refreshing your memory, as it were. A little recap’s good for the soul, you know….)
“I hate your idea.”
He shook his head.  “You love it.”
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Has someone actually said it?”
“No.  You don’t need to hear a Hershel idea to know it’s a bad idea and that you shouldn’t go along with it.  Look at the mess we’re in!”
Hershel smiled. “This is hardly a mess.  This is an adventure.  It’s SCIENCE.  And that, my dear, is my idea.”
“Science is your idea?”
“Yes.”
“Someone else already thought of it.”

Liam raised his hands, in a motion seemingly intended to ward off the further-and doubtlessly extensive-verbal sparring Hershel and I inevitably would engage in.
“Ok, look.  Sometimes I feel like I totally understand what you guys are talking about, and other times….well, whatever, I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care. Against my better judgment, I’m….sort of…horribly…curious about Hershel’s idea.”
Hershel looked smugly at me, visibly gloating.  Just really wallowing in it.  Dripping with gloat.  Rubbing my nose in it, as if I were a Huckleberry who’d dropped an enormous deuce on the middle of the living room rug, just as a “for-example”.
“Well, here’s my thought.  We insert a little kickstart.”
“A kickstart?  Like a pacemaker?”
“A pacemaker?  Who has that kind of money?  A metronome!”
I shook my head.  “No.  Not my metronome.”
“Why not? You never use it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You can’t play piano.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t use it!”
“For what?”
“To keep rhythm.”
Hershel nodded.  I knew that explanation would hold water with him.
But of course, the veritable Capuchin in my wrench, Liam did not.
“Keep rhythm for what?”
“For…you know…life.”
He shook his head.  “Doesn’t hold water.”
“OH!  But inserting a metronome into the chest cavity of a sewn together Monsterman, that just makes SO MUCH sense!”
“THAT’S  the plan?”
Hershel and I shared a long glance.  “You really don’t get what we’re talking about.”
“What possible purpose could installing a metronome into MonsterHiddlefaceManStein serve?”
“None.”
“Well…I hypothesize, posit, suspect, deduce and all around think, that it might be used as a regulator.”
Liam cocked an eyebrow.  “A regulator?”
“Right.  We hook the heart up to the metronome, and it keeps it a-ticking.”
“That hardly sounds like science.”
I slapped my forehead.  “Of course it does!  Because it’s NOT science.  It’s nonsense.  Plus-and I hesitate to ask this, does Monsterman even have any blood in his veins to pump?”
Hershel scratched his head.  “That’s the problem!  Of course!  I forgot the liquids!  All dry ingredients….That will make the installation of the metronome easier, though.”
I shook my head.  “This is a horrible idea.”
Liam nodded.  “It is, but it also can’t possibly hurt anything.  I mean, you’ve come this far….you may as well see it all the way through.  And who knows…”
“Who knows?  You know, before all of this, you seemed so rational…”
“I’ve seen some stuff.”
“Stuff that makes you prepared to believe there’s the possibility that a hodge-podge corpsinaire might be re-animated by the magic of a metronome?”
“If I told you that was on the saner end of the spectrum, would you believe me?”
“Probably not.”
He looked down.  “No, probably not.  Look.  I don’t think this is the time to go into all of it, but what you should know is that I have reason to trust Hershel.  I have reason to believe in his particular brand of….whatever.  I don’t always understand him.  Ok, scratch that.  I don’t USUALLY understand him, and I do believe that he is stark, raving mad-”
“I heard that.”
“I should hope so.  But.  There is something weirdly canny about him.  A strange ability to make the stupidest possible ideas-”
“Hey!”
“-somehow work, even though there’s absolutely no reason they should.  I have….witnessed it.  I have experienced it.  And I honestly don’t know if it’s because he’s incredibly lucky, or if he knows something we don’t.  I suspect the former.”
Hershel was stewing a little and visibly trying to remember whether “former” came first or second.
“However he does it….he does it.  And hey, maybe this could be your chance to debunk him!”
I looked down.  “I’m not enthusiastic about the alternative.  You need to take a moment-a serious moment-and consider what happens if Hershel’s luck holds out.  If his idiotic plan works.  What then?”
He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But….don’t you want to find out?”
And I was struck once again with how off, how not quite docrtinally sound, this priest was, is, seems intent on remaining.  Surely, “because we can” is not an appropriately priestly reason.
And yet…it speaks, doesn’t it?
“Alright.  Let’s do it.”