Drunktown

Everyone had a brown paper bag and all their directions were different; often they told a story. Generally, it was like the song “Brandy” only with additional verses about county jail and community college. We called our friend: we were at a discount liquor place. He said they all were. Then he laughed and something fell over. It got dark. We stopped at a bar to eat. It was happy hour; then dancing; finally new friends and their paper bag. Going home she started crying because we never found our friend. I ran over a banjo on the way home.

The New Method

I write because I am incredibly lazy. But everyone is lazy. Much to my delight, I have found a way that I can be even lazier: by sometimes limiting myself to hundred words. This will also give you more free time. Someday, I may make these hundred word stories longer (actually, I'm probably too lazy).

You really should tell me if this form is too short. Or is still too long. Or reads like a synopsis: Language, Adult Themes, Nudity, Violence.

Being laconic seems manly for the same fallacious reason that misogynists are sometimes thought manly: no time for this.

Great Darkness National Park

Family Vacation, 2004

Visitors invariably wonder at the immense scale of the thing, if it can be called a thing at all, if, in the total absence of all light, one complete obscurity can be called any greater than another. Rationally inclined visitors are disposed to discuss the lucid properties of light, an interesting subject that is totally besides the point where there simply isn’t any. Some refer to it as a natural wonder, others as the worst of Biblical curses.

Many visitors do not stay long; after all, what is there to see? These people invariably stay by the dim concession stand and gift shop on the edge of the park, the only source of light, sipping black coffee, debating whether or not to buy a poster, a calendar, DVD or a map. These are the same people that fall asleep to the TV or radio. They call to their vanished children in the dark not to let go of the guide rope. Most do not. Some do.

Lovers go a little farther, being used to being in the dark together. It is not more than a few yards, however, that the giggling and furtive kisses stop. Hands are gripped more than gently, and more out of fear. Even with the most loving couple comes the terrible realization that one is actually quite alone, and that the loving shade beside one is just another Persephone. Couples often return ashen, crying, or silent. Each wonders over a hurt they dare not speak to their companion: Why did you leave me? Why?

Many mistakenly believe the Park Rangers are naturally blind from birth, others that they are blinded by their job; both beliefs share, however, the conviction that their blindness makes them at home in the park. In reality, some are blind and some are not, but all have grown to be the same, in that they are indifferent to seeing. As to their familiarity with the park, they are as lost as any in the total darkness, but familiar with being lost. People invest them with preternatural ability in the hope that should they, or their children, venture out too far, or let go of the guide ropes, the rangers will find them. They will certainly try. But they can do little more than walk along the same ropes shouting a name, or listen, in the hopes to hearing something, ideally, frightened crying. Those who do not cry are never found.

There is another rumor, that at certain point, far into the interior of the park, the ropes give out, because no one has traveled any farther. It is true that the guide ropes really only go a little ways into shallow darkness. For those that need ropes, it is more than far enough. People do go further, however. Indeed, only people who camp overnight, for several nights, really ever see the park. It is not a question of their eyes adapting, for there is, of course, no light whatsoever to adapt to. They begin to see things, nonetheless. Just because it is totally dark does not mean there is nothing to see. This is the first piece of skepticism that must be overcome.

At first, one sees little more that faint grey flashes, like afterimages, mere phantoms –the sort of thing one sees with one’s eyes tightly closed, like distant thunderclouds. Gradually the darkness discloses other crepuscular shapes: faint dawns that lap upon one another, that originate at the horizon, or one’s nose; faint curtains that sweep past that are vaster than the most immense clouds or perhaps just before one’s face.

It is very rare to see much more than this. Beyond these simple phenomena, accounts vary greatly. Some go on to discriminate a whole plethora of faint visual entities: Will o’ the Wisps, streaks and skyfish. Others come to see immense patterns or colors. Still others say they see mythical creatures, gods, demons or things from their lives.

Most extraordinary are the claims of those who say that they begin to see things made of darkness proper; that there are indeed dark colors that are part of no spectrum of vision. That the park is a park like any other, with its own unique formations, denizens and inhabitants. That the blackest of crows fly under dark stars that are like black pinpricks in satin. That fishes dark as empty wells hug the banks of a black and silent river. That it is a beautiful and natural place. And that every man has this prospect before them, if they only looked when they closed their eyes.

Chapter Three: Quem Deus vult perdere, dementat prius

The Late Doctor Martin Hesselius

It was his honest opinion, and, to my mind, absolutely true. None stood upon the same promontory as my friend, which he alone had fully ascended and saw as far. Schopenhauer was ultimately a morbid Romantic with Eastern fancies. He had learned all there was to know from the late, great Hesselius and had ventured to explain what the former could only describe. Of Hesselius he was a deeply respectful pupil, but he had surpassed him thus: Hesselius, he remarked, had this unfortunate way of using the word “mesmerism” as though it explained something. When challenged as to what he, Aislyn, meant by this, Aislyn would ask what about walking was explained by “ambulation,” adding that sleepwalking was manifestly not explained by turns by sleep and walking.

A Noted Classmate at Wien

There were only two other pioneers in the unknown of comparable rank who had seen as much in the unexplored kingdom of dreams. He was closest in native genius and insight as that notorious Viennese alienist; he had studied alongside him under Charcot and found they shared a similar ability to remember their dreams and observe their own mental processes with dispassion. However, Aislyn had gone on to advance his skills considerably with the practice of arduous and esoteric Eastern disciplines, whereas, the amateur Hellenist (in Aislyn’s opinion) had only developed a smutty imagination and a perverse talent for simply saying the worst about himself and other people, which, by its very unacceptability, had a cunning and irresistible attraction for hysterics, neurotics and poor sleepers generally.

The Unfortunate Irving Klaw

That only left the esoteric Klaw, but poor Morris was no more. With Klaw, too, he shared methods. Klaw had observed what he called “the cycle of crime” and its relation to dreams; he, too, slept at the scene of the crime, only fastidiously bringing his own “odically sterilized pillow.” Both Klaw and the Hebrew doctor suspected much from the fact of dreaming, from the presence of patterns wholly external to cause, action at the distance of dreams, but both had finally turned their back on philosophy, the Viennese to his conviction that what he did was medicine, and Klaw to the ultimately incoherent doctrines of that afflicted philologist from Basel: Klaw believed in the Eternal Return and thought this explained the patterns he saw. “Poor fellow,” Aislyn said of him, “he was an idealist trapped in a materialist’s body.”




No sooner had we exited the Baroness’ carriage, as it started up again, leaving us deposited before a grand and unfamiliar entrance. Once we ascended the steep steps, there was only the faintest sashay of a maid to let us in.

“Baroness, where are your servants?” piped Aislyn “there are some things I should wish to ask of them.”

“You will forgive me gentlemen,” said the Baroness with a soft tremolo, “I have sent most of our staff away. Under the circumstances…”

I reassured her that we were here in our professional capacity and did not require waiting on. For my gallantry I earned the briefest flashing glare of irritation from my friend, which our long familiarity allowed me to detect. At the top of the magnific stair we were addressed by the apparition of a fantastic herald: an enormous lion stood before us, defiant and waiting. Only, instead of a head, great billowy white clouds poured forth from the neck. It was one of the Baron’s trophies, an African. Aislyn moved to ascend the stair.

“Quite a creature,” I remarked as we climbed.

“Where is the head?” asked Aislyn.

“Back to the taxidermist’s” said the Baroness, “the Baron had the worst trouble with his head –something about the expression of the creature. Something missing. Without the expression, he used to say, the whole thing might as well be cotton. He eventually took to having our whole household sit for busts and portraits to capture the expression, so that it might be translated into feline terms.”

“Death? Defiance?” I asked.

“Only the Baron knew, only the Baron saw” said the Baroness.

Splinters of wood and bent iron announced that we had reached the Baron’s chamber. Aislyn stepped through. The Baroness looked away. I entered.

The Baron’s room was warm as a den. Present was the close sleepy linen smell of a bedchamber, and the discernable note of the Baron’s male vigor. Behind that, perfume. The room was done in a grand, yet personal style that suited the Baron, a mix of fine and utilitarian objects, well-crafted chairs showing signs of the Baron’s easy athleticism and familiar ill-use. Some casual saber marks were practiced into the flocking. The bars in the windows were indeed deeply set; they permitted passage neither in nor out. There was no other point of entry into the room; no fireplace or vent. The room was in the disarray of an insomniac or sleepwalker. An unusual deck of cards spilled over a table. Aislyn flipped one to reveal the face of a disapproving moon. Unfolded and miscellaneous papers lay about, as well as books, put down and picked up in the halting course of some unknown investigation. A massive samovar sat on a table, and the makings for coffee, several cups for which marked out the Baron’s paces. Finally, there was the bed itself, enormous and rich. The sheets were an over delicate and prurient satin that slipped like fine sand from my fingers.

Aislyn had not moved. He was surveying the remains of the doorframe. Presently he turned about and moved about the room quite casually. Aislyn’s manner never seemed very thoughtful, but rather distracted; he often seemed less like a detective rather than a small child that had been let into his father’s study -and not necessarily the most keen or promising child at that. He began to play with a series on animal horns he found on a table, putting them on his head and stroking them. I spoke up, “It seems, Baroness, that the Baron was determined, on this last night, to resist falling asleep and defy the oneiromantic prophecy of his doom. How could he have fallen asleep then?”

Aislyn nearly dropped the coffee cup he had been toying with. I took the cup from him like an indulgent parent. Yet as I did, I noticed a flowery odor over the silt in the cup: laudanum.

"Perhaps the Baron changed his mind," I reflected, "and decided to fight the dream on his own ground, as it were."


Aisyln yawned. He loosened his tie and sat on the bed quite familiarly, slipping out of his shoes. He took out a series of postcards and looked at them idly. He began to scribble inscrutably on the back. As some of the postcards were of quite questionable taste, I hastened to explain.

“Dr. Aislyn notes all the relevant details of the dream and the event on postcards. This assigns an arbitrary image to each fact. During his dream, the images may reappear, transform or supervene, and this new series of relations and the order in which they appear may prove to have bearing on the facts of the case. Aislyn will also randomly shuffle the cards during a predordained and regular walk and use them to recall or contrast with the dream he has. The relationship between all the elements is quite arbitrary.”

“No more arbitrary than any other language or system,” interjected Aislyn pedantically (paraphrasing Abelard). “Elements of a dream appear episodic, irrational and fragmentary to our waking mind, but even so they often strike us with the appearance of meaning. The sounds we make or characters we write have no organic or conceptual attachment to their meaning –and yet they signify. The situation is not unlike staring at the glyphs of an unknown language. By assigning an arbitrary value to the elements of the dream and contrasting them with a determined walk, I try and find a common term, to solve the cipher.”

“I understand your methodology,” said the Baroness, “but not its rationale.”

“There is none to understand, Baroness. Imagine if you were to come upon a hieroglyph depicting an eye, a body of water and a tree. You might puzzle over the meaning of the things depicted, thinking perhaps that the sentence means that a sea and forest were seen. But the whole thing is really just a child’s riddle in a language you already speak, a rebus: I-sea-yew; ‘I see you.’ This is the sort of transformation that dreams make and it cannot be deduced or reached through any geometric reasoning.”

“I believe I understand what you describe and yet,” interjected the Baroness “why should aspects of your dream have any bearing on the real facts of the case?”

“A very acute question, Baroness,” replied Aislyn with some pleasure, “and one with no answer except useless metaphysical speculation. It has been my observation that the syntax and order of dreams and the order of things in the world obey a curious parallelism. And not only dreams, but stories, too. If one looks for it, the world seems written through and through with the same melody. Why this pattern should exist? That is the question.”


The Baroness bit her lip, yet a grieved look still surfaced.

“Do you think, therefore, that he knew?” she asked.

“A lot, my lady, hinges on the sense you wish to put to the word ‘know.’ He dreamed it and he knew that he dreamt it,” said Aislyn.

“The description of my method has been highly sensationalized,” announced Aislyn, turning to me, “but understand that it is purely rational and scientific in orientation. It is, in principle, a practical exercise, not that different from the dogged efforts of the Yard’s Tam Fetch.”

“I would not count on Inspector Slainy to find a lost dog if he were the tail," announced the Baroness, inexplicably.

“Nor Hyde, if even he Jekyll,” I shot out.

“You are unjust to our capable Inspector. In this particular case, I have a specific gift and a subtly that Inspector Slainy lacks, that has a special application here,” said Aislyn with another jabbing look in my direction.

“Inspector Slainy probably dreams of ham sandwiches,” giggled the Baroness.

“Or a tossed stick, or big red ball,” I snorted.

“Or finally catching his tail,” laughed the Baroness.

“Please, my lady -Doctor," pleaded Aisyln, "there is no reason to ridicule the good and serviceable efforts of the adequate Inspector Slainy. He does a great service in eliminating the blindingly obvious and when it comes to catching the common blackguard or a sailor’s escaped orang, there is no better.”

The Baroness stopped giggling suddenly.

“Well,” said Aisyln.

With this Aisyln took off his jacket and dove into the Baron’s bed. He paddled around somewhat to get the feel of it turning this way and that. Finally, he curled up and looked at me with the unaffected enthusiasm of an infant.

“The game is a foot,” he yawned.

The Baroness made a last effort.

“Do you intend to dream his dream?” asked the Baroness.

"It would be more accurate to say I intend for my dream to dream his dream, or his dream to begin dreaming me. Dreams have no criterion of identity, you see. We could say that the same dream can be dreamed by many men. Dreams are not unusual in this; they are like number, given ideally to us. We know prior to any actual physics, without inspection, that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. In dreams it is quite otherwise. We could, of course, say with equal justification that no man can dream the same dream as another, or that one cannot dream the same dream once for the same reason a man cannot step in the same river twice –or more accurately, even once. Mutatis mutandis, we could say that no one dreams the same dream, or that everyone does. Such matters are for the schoolmen,” said Aislyn sleepily.

“Is his dream still here?" asked the Baroness.

“It is here. It is everywhere. It is still being dreamed. Dreams are oblivious of and immune to time. The dream does not know if the sleeper has awoken or ceased exist. Dreams and dreamers do not learn. Waking, we learn. Dreams continue, in place, forever, flowing over and into each other like the streams that compose a great river, flowing into an infinite ocean…” said Aislyn, and here he trailed off into silence, followed by a big dreamy boyish smile that I knew from his sleep.

The Day The Desert Flooded

When the waters first climbed the banks, we were overjoyed, because it was exciting and now we could go where we normally could not go. I was very young then and some of the older ones looked very grave and said not to go. Instead they turned and went very, very deep indeed. When we came to the surface, everything was quite wild, much the way we loved it; we climbed the great white-building peaks and crashed with them, we formed great circles and watched the lightning, we laughed with the roar that roared above the roar.

Eventually, we began to see some of your things; we were used to their odd shapes and purposelessness. We liked to pass them around to each other and touch and smell them, they were so odd. Some made good toys. This time, we began to see more and more of them. We thought one of your poor boats had broken up, as they often do, but there was so much more and things we had never seen. My brothers and sisters laughed and played, wrapping the wet cloths around us in imitation of how we had seen you do. Honestly, we never understood half the stuff that your people did; to imitate you, was for us, simply to act silly.

When a beautiful doll slid among us, there was a great cry among our sisters, who swarmed upon it and playfully fought for it. My strongest and fastest sister naturally prevailed, as she did in all our games, and hugged it to her bosom. Then she gave a terrible shriek into the wind. It was not a doll, but one of your children. My sisters gathered all around, quite crestfallen and curious. They swam slowly and pitied it sadly, passing the thing around. Poor little thing, they cooed, kissing its cold brow and hands before discarding it to the care of the waves.

It was then it was decided that we should investigate what had happened. We swam in close to shore, closer than we normally dared, only to find that the shore had vanished. All was water, all was ours and the rain continued above us. We swam in easily and were soon surrounded by so many of your things, we no longer could pay them any attention. Beneath us, we saw your towns. How strange they were, cut up with their regular lines and everything divided up like spoils. It was funny, because your towns do not belong under water. It was so strange to see your towns and now to walk among them flooded, as though we had become the ghosts of you.

Our play gave way to awe and wonder and bewilderment at your things and life. We looked at each other. We began to wonder if any of you had survived. Your creatures, too, had all gone. We rose again to the surface where the rains still poured from a black sky that was neither day, nor night, but only rain. One of us spied a lone mountaintop; we swam over to see if some willful goat or bird had retained purchase there. It was there we saw what we thought was the last of you. You were naked, huddled and miserable. Many of you screamed at each other and at heaven. Your females held on to little ones. You had no hope whatsoever. If we could, we would have cried for you.

My brothers and sisters and I did not know what to think. We should teach them to swim, the youngest said. It must be because they were wicked, said another. That is a terrible thing to say, said the wisest and we all agreed and shamed him. Is the world ours now, asked my youngest sister. It must be, said another, look at them, they will never survive.

We truly did not know what to do for you. My brothers came back with things for you to float on. My sisters sang for you. But this was little more than play for us. The water came upon your ankles and you shuddered with terror. Some of you began to curse us, and so we left you.

Then we saw something still more unlikely. It was one of your ships, only enormous. Only a madman could have built it. Swimming closer, we saw that it was full of animals. The animals screamed and yelled, frightened by the waves, the thunder, the boat and their confinement. In many ways, the whole thing seemed like a terrible idea. The waters already lapped the highest peak. Where was your boat to go? Finally, we saw your last captain and his family on the deck. We thought surely they must seek to rescue your brothers and sisters and tried to signal to them. But they passed your last survivors without pause or regard, which baffled us.

Instead the crew of this curious ship screamed and yelled at each other. The father appeared drunk or mad. They abused the animals and each other. They slaughtered them and tossed them overboard: whether in the hopes of appeasing the storm, lightening the boat, or out of sheer cruelty, we could not tell. They seemed as mad and frenzied as the survivors they had abandoned. They cursed the black, wet sky. To our great sadness, we realized you were not saved at all, and this rain would never end.


We talked among each other about what to do. The world is ours now, one said, it has been given to the creatures of the sea. But we do not need the whole world, said another, they live on but a handful of sand and rock. Mother must be angry, said one of my sisters, she must be angry with them. We should go to Mother, we agreed.

And so we flew to our Mother. We swam down, down, down, down, deeper than can be said. And we sang the songs of praise because we are always truly happy to see our Mother. And we cried, Mother, Mother, Mother, the land creatures are suffering. Mother, Mother, Mother, the feet creatures are crying. Mother, Mother, Mother, the air breathers are dying. Why, Mother, why, why, why?

Children, children, said our great Mother, I gave them a handful of sand and they spilled their own brother’s blood on it. I gave them air to breathe and they lie and spit curses with it. I am sorry about the other creatures, but this dry land thing has got to go. Someday, the rain may wash their poison into the sea, my children, and make you sick. I cannot let this happen.

Mother, Mother, Mother, we cried, the sea is great, you are great. What about the furry ones and the winged ones and everything else that grows? They are also our brothers and sisters. These wicked ones too, did you not make them in our own image, only with two flippers to go about on land, like the lungfish? Mother, you cannot do this. Mother, you should not do this. Stop the rain, Mother, stop your anger. We have enough. We will always have enough, for you are the great Mother, creator of all. Your love is as great as the sea.

And at this, the storm abated, we could tell, and Mother hugged and kissed us all. O my children, my beautiful children, she said, never stray from me, but be always close in the bosom of the waves. For the sake of your tenderness, I will allow a dry spot upon this globe and they will do as they may with it. Cats and dogs, too. Gather stones and rocks and pile them upon the top of the highest mountain. If you do this, they will not perish all.

And I will put a sign in the sky after every rainstorm to remind them: of water you were fashioned, and to water you return.

And so we did as she bid. And so you were saved. And we sang a great praise to our Mother, we, her children, in the deepest and best place you call Paradise.

Chapter Two: Mortem absque damnum

“Gentlemen, I call on you so precipitously this morning on the saddest of circumstances. You were both acquainted with my husband, the Baron?”

We had indeed come to know that singular person, in this same sitting room, in the course of the Adventure of “Non-vixit” where we knew him by turns as willful client, fearsome ally and cunning antagonist.


“The Baron is no more,” she announced. “He was found dead yesterday morning in his bed.”


“Your husband’s passing is the most grievous and deplorable news. He was as like a hero of Homer’s myth, as any I should hope to meet. It is a great loss to our country and our kingdom to have lost our greatest peer.” said Aisyln gravely.


The Baroness acknowledged this.

“Yet I have come to you, Professor Thomas Aislyn, and you, Doctor Whits-Hansom, because of the most unusual and perplexing circumstances of my late husband’s most untimely passing,” said the Baroness.

My friend gave a most natural bow, folded in him from his noble Hungarian side.

“We are entirely your creatures to command,” assented my friend.

I felt, all at once, acutely for the lady. The sudden, prolonged and poorly explained reclusion of the Baron _________ had been the occasion for the lowest and most common sort of hypothesis. There was, however, little that the Baron did not dare to know. There was not a more vigorous, ambitious, singular and dangerous man in the city. The Baron was, by turns, tyrant and reformer, hero and scoundrel, libertine and defender of the faith. The Baron was a man of great energy and vitality who simply had to experience everything directly himself, in his own immense person, before forming his own fierce, adamant and aristocratic opinion. As a young man, the Baron saw no reason he could not do as he pleased and cohabit freely: so he believed in free love, and the equality of classes and sexes. He had never seen God, and so he was a blasphemous freethinker. He had, however, seen things clamoring on Qomolangma and so believed in the Migoi and so ran afoul of the Royal Society (who declined to credit his climb or his observations). Then he decided the Migoi were angels, and so became a positively Tostoyian reformer.

His marriage to the Lady Girrot had been his great salvation from his own seemingly boundless nature. Vela Girrot was herself a singular and daring creature, a woman who had studied mathematics, a Godwinite and, many said, a féministe. They seemed a brilliant match of two intransigents and, as many had hoped, the beautiful Girrot had finally given the Baron a domestic cast.

As such, the Baron had lately condescended to simple politics, where his views had, however, not become any less interesting or more cohesive. He was, however, a man of incredible stature, so partisans of all kinds sought to capture his support, without reaping the tempest of his opinions. His mere presence induced unthinkable allegiances and impossible violent schisms and at least two vituperative opposing broadsides a day, of which, on occasion, he could be the author of both and same. His disappearance of late, then, required an explanation, and yet, to the scandal of society, no credible euphemism presented itself. That such a character should have now left the stage entirely, without another word or line was unthinkable.

“He died,” said the Baroness “apparently in his sleep.”

This was indeed perplexing. The Baron was a vigorous and exceptional man: a master huntsman, a mountaineer, a boxer and a gymnast, champion of any sport he cared to compete in. That he should die in his bed seemed the least likely of all places and while sleeping the least likely of occupations.

“The doctors of the Royal College cannot explain it. They could find nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. No ailment. No injury. No reason he should be dead rather than living.”

“How was the Baron the day previous?” I asked.

“He was,” paused the Baroness “as before: well. There was nothing that threatened his health.”

The Baroness was quiet. Aislyn, too, was silent. This became somewhat problematic after a time.

Finally, the Baroness asked, “Can you gentlemen not help me?”

“Well, Baroness, this distressing event is indeed confused with perplexing circumstances. Yet, I cannot say what service, exactly, we can render. My friend, Doctor Whits-Hansom has been of the greatest aid to me as my physician, and I also so trained at Wien. Yet we are not medical investigators. I know my fellows at the Royal College; they are the supreme experts in matters physiological and mechanical. If the cause of your husband’s untimely passing remains opaque to them, then it is not a matter our science can recover.”

“Do you not see?” implored the Baroness, “the Baron was murdered.”

“I see,” said Aislyn.

“Why do you think he was murdered?” I asked, because I did not.

“I do not think he was murdered, gentlemen. I know it.”

“Did the doctors find any signs of assault or injury?”

“None.”

“Were there signs of struggle or poison? A cry or disturbance in the night?”

“Neither tumult, nor poison, nor cry in the night.”

“Had the Baron been threatened, had his enemies made motions against him?”

“They are cowards all. They would not dare. Our home is a fortress sure. Our servants loyal. The Baron had taken to locking himself in. Even I had not the key. It took hours for a team of firemen to cut their way in.”

“Why should we say that he was murdered?”

“Because he was” asserted the Baroness.

"I see," I said.

Typically, my friend seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to my questions or their answers. He looked distractedly in the corner. If one did not know better, one would imagine he was trying to choose between the rug and the curtains.

At the stroke of the clock, he stood up.

"Please, Baroness, accept my deepest and most personal expression of sympathy for your loss. I wish I had but the gifts to offer you aid or comfort. I do not know if that great man has gone to Olympus or Valhalla, but I am certain he is in a better place among his true peers" said Aislyn.

It was not in the Baroness' experience or expectation to be refused, much less dismissed and she colored fiercely.

"You will not help me at all then?" she managed.

"How great lady, can we help you? If you would have a physician's aid, you must submit to his frankness and speak in explicit natural terms. You know your husband to be a victim of bloody murder, but dare not speak how you know" stated Aislyn.

"The Baron shared with me a single geste," said Aislyn "but for such a man, that single occasion gave him to me thrice. He was not a man that could be confounded by shame and on the occasions he stood in this room, he spoke his mind quite directly and without reserve."

"To have loved such a man, is to have loved much harsh truth as well. So I cannot imagine that there is much that you would hesitate to speak upon either. Indeed, your own bearing is such that I can see for certain that you were very much at least his match."

"So if there is something you will not speak, it must be a supreme vice from your perspective indeed. I would spare your feelings entirely, but that is against your present purpose and will not avenge your husband's wrongful murder. So I shall take the shortest path, that it might be the kindest and most just available to us."

"Of the Baron's motives, it cannot have been his pride, for that was something never hidden from anyone, but rather his emblem. Likewise, his wrath proceeded him like a wave. The combined action of both in his bloodstream surely made him immune to envy. Why then did the Baron lock his door -or rather what reason could there be of which you would not speak?"

"It cannot be the simple scarlet of pruience. The Baron denied himself nothing and you are too independently minded, unconventional and worldly to feign any shame at this. He thought his habits simply natural, as his other appetites -which rules out gluttony. As for greed I doubt there was much that the Baron wished to possess that he did not."

"So if there were any failing too shameful to admit, then it must be the remainder. Tell me, then, why had the Baron been sleeping so much? Why did he spend so much time in bed, to the point of locking himself in?”


A quiver sprinkled on the Baronesses’ countenance and she turned away.


At the turn of her back my friend unfolded himself.


“Please great lady,” he began.


“You’ve been brave, so very brave –and correct, in coming all this way to see me. You cannot go back now. Give me leave to serve, aid and defend. Grant me the high privilege of answering your question.”

“It was the dream,” she said.


The rest came with great difficulty, but with practiced and exact words: for months, the Baron had been plagued with strange dreams. This was the explanation for the Baron’s reclusion of late and his torpor. He would lie in bed all day trying to remember and puzzle out his dreams, and drift off hoping to experience them again. This past month he had become obsessed with trying to capture one in particular to the point of trying to deliberately induce it. It was a dream of growing horns.

This filled the Baroness with mortification and shame.

“But these past weeks, he had another dream, a dream of dying. In his bed, in his sleep. On a certain date…”

My friend spoke very clearly and unaffectedly as upon a matter of fact: ”You were exactly right to come to me. There does not exist another mind anywhere that can answer this riddle.”

What I Did This Summer

She was one of those girls bare feet looked good on, with the cut-offs, the spaghetti straps, the bottle of lemonade than was only half lemonade, the fine soft hairs that glowed over her tan, her golden eyes and palms that never sweated and when she bit me I was actually at first, quite nonplussed, then shocked and hurt and embarrassed for her. That was my feeling: I can’t believe you just did that. This really changes my whole opinion of you. Then I got very, very sick that week and I didn't see her because I was somewhat angry about the whole thing. Then the following week, I bit back and it made me feel better, it made me feel better about the whole thing.

We ran a lot, by the lake, through the park, in the street. We ran and threw and caught Frisbees and balls that sometimes weren’t ours, but we were good sports about it. We visited other people’s barbecues and birthday parties and brought beer and were generally quite welcome. We played with other people’s kids and jumped in the water and jumped out of the water and dried off together on the rocks. We would laugh and have fun and dare each other in barking contests, getting stuff from strangers, chasing dogs and squirrels and people rollerblading and little tiny dogs, and people laughed to see us only if no one saw us we would pop their little necks just for kicks because it makes a sound you will never forget, like listening to Blue Oyster Cult on a really good stereo.

It was a long summer and I really had nothing to do now, in fact, I had gone pro about doing nothing, found my possessions on the curb and picked out only what I needed and could carry and really didn’t miss the books I was never going to finish anyway or most of my stuff, because it had all lately started to get scratched and seriously busted up and smelled like wet dog. We gave my stuff away to kids on the street, students, people who didn’t want the things we were giving them and threw the TV off an overpass. We also cut my landlady’s legs off and slow-cooked them in her oven while she watched (rather appalled) but that was not about revenge, it was because she was in at the time and because I did want my stereo. But the funniest part, the part I laughed about all summer was that the thing that upset her the most, that really made her mad, wasn’t any of all that. It was taking a crap in her apartment. That drove her nuts. That was too much. She was taking that out my deposit and good luck renting another place just as nice and eating another landlady. We left her cats alone, because they were sweethearts.

And the city was great, we loved the city, there was something every week, a party, a festival, an escape at the zoo. We liked the museums. We liked good cheap restaurants. We liked terrible cheap restaurants. We liked cheap, cheap bars and the people who go to cheap, cheap bars and generally broke even by the end of the evening. But it was a great time to be outdoors and let the wind play with your ears. There was all this stuff to look at: people, kites –fireflies. And fun smells. We bathed in the fountain and little kids played with us. It was good to sleep outdoors. I was always happy, just plain happy and enthused about everything, when I woke up, just because I was awake, and when I saw her there with me I would be even happier, so happy I had to bone her.

And when things got a little too hot in the city or there were questions we could disappear to the country and the country is beautiful and you get your peripheral vision back and there are huge fields and farmer’s dogs and cows and a barn nobody watches. And you can ride together in the back of a pickup or put your heads out of the window. You're cute together, a natural pair, clean, healthy and friendly and country people like you and you meet the whole family and have a real sit-down dinner. And when you are sitting there on the porch drinking lemonade that someone’s mom has made for you, or just watching the sun set, someone slaps you on the shoulder or pets you on the head, and the old feller, old enough to be your father, asks you where you’re like to settle down if you like the country, and you remember that you are pretending to be newlyweds again and this is a kind of honeymoon and she squeezes your hand and smiles the sweetest smile and the old man smiles and your ears feel all hot but you can’t help smiling too.

And when it’s time to go, you have a picture of that place and that beautiful family in your mind and it’s the most perfect thing. And on the way back to the city driving the pick-up, you come across a youth group from the city (Our Lady of Guadalupe) and they are going camping for the first time and it is obvious they do not know the first thing about camping and so you take a little time, go back a little the way you came and you show them, boys and girls, how to set up their tents, how to start a fire and some other things. And that night, you come back to their tents and you show them some other things, boys and girls, and you take turns and you fill up their digital cameras with some really amazing pictures that make her laugh so loud at the truck stop on the way back that you really have to go, go now –sorry, we're newlyweds, that’s our van, I’m Pastor Mike (don’t laugh girl, that’s what the van says).

And then it was cooler, it was Fall, and we both loved the Fall and we walked by the smart window displays and she liked what she saw, and I liked seeing her in it and it was definitely time for a new look anyway, very smart, and we paid cash and went to the latest bistro. And later the wind blew this way and that and despite my last landlady’s opinion, we in fact, found a much nicer place, through much nicer people, such nice people and here we are enjoying our new furniture and surroundings and an actual record collection in much different taste and she puts her head on my shoulder and asks will we always be together and I said not if they kill you and she bit me and I put her into a choke hold and she connected with my solar plexus and she is not kidding around when she hits and I rotated her 180 degrees with respect to our new hardwood floor and we broke some stuff that we were planning to use later before getting to stop. Then she was all very cute as always and I pet the soft fur and nuzzled the ear and smelled the nice smell. Then we were very happy together and she rolled on her back and I licked her chin and we snuggled and I snored and she nudged me and whimpered, I feel like I want a little kid, can we have a little kid? and I mentioned that we just had a little kid and she said, no, jerkwad, I mean children of our own and I said sure, why not, we’re moving up in the world: we can have a whole litter. We’ll send them to the best schools.Opening Theme Music: Monarch covering "Erection" by Turbonegro