Sherpa Scary #2: No Room at the Inn

Sherpa's mom made her way through the nameless tourists and to the counter, a long golden block of stations and carefully smiling clerks.

"Yes ma'am, may I help you?"

Barbara dug in her purse, talking to it. "Uh, yeah, I have a reservation, under. Wait. Uh, 'McIntyre' for two." She grubbed open her wallet and after some peering and shuffling of plastic, slidout a driver's license and credit card and put them on the marble counter. She glanced at them again as the clerk swept across to take them.

More quickly than one might expect, Barbara slapped her meaty hand down over the two cards and muttered at the counter, "Sorry, wrong card."

The clerk barely missed touching the back of her hand, and retreated ever so slightly his lips curving upward in a rictus. "That's quite alright, ma'am."

Not uncovering the cards, Barbara slid them off and into the purse's giant cavity. Then dug back into her wallet, pulling out two more cards and squinted carefully at them both. "Here, these are them." She again slid a driver's license and credit card across the counter.

The clerk waited, wary, then collected the cards and laid them nearer his console. "Let's see, Mrs. McIntyre . . ." His fingers fluttered across the console's keys. "Yes, we have you down here for a pyramid spa suite." he stalled for a moment. "Well," he continued brightly, "It looks like you are eligible for an upgrade to one of our tower suites. how does that sound, Mrs. McIntyre?"

Barbara gripped her purse and stared at the counter where her cards had been, "No, I need, I just want the pyramid suite, that's all." She could feel the sweat starting to collect around her waistband.

"Ah, yes, I understand." His hands fluttered again. "but did you  know that the but the tower suite also comes with an upgrade package? Champagne and a fruit basket plus . . . complimentary tickets to the Criss Angel show?"

A chuckled grunt rose out of Barbara at the mention of Angel's name. She would worry about that imposter later. "I just want my original room, please."

"I understand. One moment ma'am, I'll be right back." Without lifting her head much, Barbara was able to slew her eyes and track the clerk as he stepped away from his console and clipped away toward a woman at one end. Once there, they leaned in together over another screen, gesturing and typing and alternately shaking and nodding their heads until at last they both walked back down the length of the counter to where Barbara waited.

"I'm sorry for the wait, Mrs. McIntyre," said the woman, "My name is Deb and I'm happy to assist you in whatever way possible."

Barbara felt the slick wet building between her arms and torso. This wasn't working. She just wanted to check in.

"We seem to have made an error in your reservation, but we are happy to upgrade your room to something in one of the towers and provide a generation compensation package for you . . . "

"I need a spa suite in the pyramid. Not in the tower. What do I need to do to get a spa suite in the tower?"

"Well, we don't have any currently available. Unless there is a cancellation, of course. We can put you on a standby list, but I must tell you it is unlikely . . ."

A solution had presented itself. Barbara glanced up at the pair briefly, then lowered her eyes  again. "Put me on standby. I think there will probably be a cancellation." Then, with uncharacteristic flair, "I'm feeling lucky."

The Bookseller (in its short entirety)

Her hands laid out the three souls. Max Brand’s cowpoke permanently creased down the middle, Bradbury’s Illustrated Man rubbed clean of color, and a dirty, dirty girl masturbating behind a tiny black dot.

It was all she had come away with, but it was enough.

Scooping them up, the Bookseller turned back to the Sealy pillow-top stained and sagging and scattered with her gear. She lifted on her oiled coat and ran her fingers through her satchel. Three cans, bits of hardware and wire, tallow and wick, flint and steel, and her copy of The Illustrated Castle Book long since unbound, folded in quarters and wrapped carefully in thickly waxed paper. This she would never sell. Its colors were still bright.

She slung her blade across her back, then paused and glanced back through the broken Plaza window at the Smith Center across the tracks , its flanks scrawled and fire stained. Its dead spiked on rebar fasci. Waiting for souls.

She strode through the parking garage, scanning for trouble. Few lived here permanently: only a handful who catered to pilgrims who came during the Walk.

Then out into the open and over the tracks. The sun glared half-lidded, gray and hot above an omnipresent veil.

A pedestrian bridge stood over the tracks. A place for killers. The Bookseller stayed clear, rounding across the flat ground.

A clanging of scrap on scrap sounded as she crossed an unseen line. She stopped and turned her eyes to the tower, all symmetry and soot. A figure peeled itself from the shadowed doorway at the tower’s base and walked toward her, past the spiked dead. She waited.

He came, naked and thin and rubbed in fat and talc. A buyer-priest.

“Do you have them?”

“Yes.”

“And the price?”

“You know the price”

“Of course. Let me see them.”

The Bookseller pulled the cowpoke from her satchel.

“Is that all?”

“My payment?”

The buyer croaked once, then twice, then the third time loud.

Three rags carrying rags scuttled from the shadows and resolved into children, toothless and hunched and blessed with pain.

The buyer took the stracci strappati and held them out to the Bookseller. She took one and hefted it. The buyer split a gummed grin and nodded.

She tugged a corner, as if in disbelief. Rare, so rare. A grinder, a hearth coffeepot, and a vacuum-sealed bag. The Bookseller hurried them into her satchel. She handed Bradbury and masturbating girl over to the priest.

“Will you stay for the ritual?”

She never did. These books had souls alright, but they could no more raise the dead than could she. Stories from the east told of Lazarus tomes, and maybe they were true, but probably not. Books, she knew, help you quiet the walk to death, not stir you once you arrived.

Emily Kray copyright 2014

And tonight, like pictures she had seen in her dreams, she would sit over the city, sip coffee, and gaze at castles in the candlelight.

Raised by Wolves #2: Play Date

Skye came over after school yesterday and wanted to play some ping pong. That caused a problem. Not the ping pong. She is a pretty good player, but not as good as I am, so we normally have some close games. I usually win, but not always. She is competitive and as self-motivated as a badger digging after whatever it is badgers dig around for. Hand-eye stuff just seems to come natural for  me.

Skye just dropped by, and that was the problem. I tell all my friends, or rather the few who are close enough and have known me for long enough to even be invited to our house, to always coordinate visits. Always.

I tell them my parents are anal about having everything planned ahead of time. My friends accept this, although more than once they've said some version of, "I don't know, Kevin, your mom and dad seem pretty cool. I think they wouldn't mind us coming by whenever."

"Yeah, but it might be your last visit," I usually reply. Let them think it's just hyperbole.

Anyway, I was in the kitchen, ours is an open floor plan ranch, and I thought I saw a shadow slant across the drapes, back lit by the late afternoon sun. Shadows that cut across drapes make me nervous, even when I shouldn't be.

I heard the thump-athump of sneakers on the porch, a quick rap of knuckles on the door, and Skye's shout, "Hey Kev, you in there jerkin' off?"

I cut around the kitchen counter and trotted to the door. I didn't want her to think I actually had been jerking off.

"Hi! I'm here to school your ass in ping-pong." She grinned and popped up on her toes, sliding her hips to the right and pantomiming a slow lob return with a paddle.

"Oh,come on Skye. You know I'll take you down. Besides, why didn't you call before you came over? You know . . ."

"It's all good, your mom and dad aren't home. I know 'cause you told me yesterday they were going to some kind of all day symposium thing and wouldn't be back until after dinner."

"Well, yeah, that's true, but still."

"Ohhhhh. I get it. You had a hot date with Rosie." Skye loosely curled her fist and made a vigorous stroking motion while squinting her face in comic ecstasy. "Don't worry, I'll leave you plenty of stroke time, after I kick your ass in ping-pong." She bounced past me and into the house and turned into the kitchen. "But first, a snack."

I sighed, shut the door and followed her into the kitchen and watched her root around for something to eat.

"Marshmallows!" Skye pulled the half-eaten bag from the cabinet and raised them over her head in triumph. "Let's go."

She stuffed a couple of marshmallows in her mouth and talked through them all the way down the basement stairs. "Ymph knomph Mmp Hanphommnu?"

"No. I have no idea what you are saying."

Skye jumped the last three steps, spun around and laughed, pointing to her stuffed cheeks. the light from upstairs formed a bright rectangle around her, like a spotlight on her own private stage. Skye liked being in the spotlight. Behind her, the basement was dark.

"Hey Skype, you need to reboot."

She rolled her eyes. "Somph" gulp "funny. Like I haven't heard that one, from you, before."

As I popped on the light switch, I remembered why I was still on edge, and it was far more than just being irritated at Skye for not having called before she came over.

 I hadn't gotten around to cleaning up yet.

Indigo Feed #2: The Leaving

Glya and I made disparate love last night. An act of disconnection. Pantil slept in her room.
Afterward, we walked naked to the kitchen together, our hands apart, and made beras on the stove.  We watched the steam whorls under the thin canister light and felt the dawn rise, proclaiming nothing.We looked up at each other. Her eyes, green and lost, abandoned me.

This would be easy if she hated me.

The silver shuttles seem silent beyond the broad terminal windows. Workers, small beneath the shuttles' bulk, are choreographed to the music of the daily launch cycle.  Around them, slow huffing steam condenses in the morning cold, coalescing into cumulus pillars then dissolving.

"NOW BOARDING orbital shuttle 0010 to L4"

My call.

I sit alone with only my small bag of things I cannot buy. I peel open the seal. Pantil looks up at me, her face painted by her hand. A self-portrait in tangible pigment on stiff clothboard. The smell of her hugs my coat.

I gather my things and stand. There are few others here for the early launches. I signal a passing cart and it tumbles over, perfunctory. I select breakfast. Another patron steps up and waits for me to finish. We glance at each other and nod. Her eyes are dark and her coat smells of Indigo.

I leave her at the cart and move along the terminal to the boarding area. A cluster of citizens gather and the screens over the gate snap on. A smiling, ethnically neutral host appears, his welcome prattle lost in the buzz of families and business travelers. The host slickers off and a view of the departure anteroom appears. The families look up now, exclaiming and waving and throwing embraces at relatives and friends on the screen. The relatives and friends exclaim and wave and throw embraces back.

Glya left me at the receiving station and said she would not see me go. But there she was, her hand covering her face, with Pantil at her side, near the back of the crowd. Pantil saw me, tugged at her mother and pointed at the screen on their side. She launched her hand in the air, waved, then pointed to her node device. I will wait for your ping, father.


I waved back to Pantil, threw her an embrace and mouthed a silent "I love you" to them both. Glya, removing her hand, mouthed back, "I know."

SEND MARK 1001.33.1453.2

Raised by Wolves #1: Go to Your Room!

Hey, I wasn't raised by wolves. Werewolves, yeah, but not wolves. I mean, it's tough when both your parents are at "that time of the month" together. I usually just lock myself in my room, pop in my earbuds, and ignore them.

Actually, a lot of kids would probably envy my room. I don't have some shitty little hollow-core door and thin-ass walls. my door is essentially a vault door: steel paneled, 14 bolt locking system, and key coded. the thing is, when my mom says, "go to your room right now!" I don't bitch or whine or even hesitate. Lately, she has begun shifting with very little notice.

This is a new and very scary development.

Sherpa Scary #1: Dead on Arrival

Sherpa Scary made it three-fifths of the way to Lost Wages before dying. Which pissed off his mother, Barbara, because she had to haul all that weight into town and get him into a suite at the Luxor.

Barbara always hated it when Sherpa called it “Lost Wages,” because it was like he knew exactly what was coming and went there anyway, happily. Plus, it was so fucking lame, like the tired hooker of a phrase “What happens in Vegas. . “ Jesus, she couldn’t even get it out without gagging.

Sherpa, or rather, Sherpa’s form, jellied around in the passenger seat of the 1998 Tercel, like he was in a really deep sleep. He smelled pretty rank. But it wasn’t decomposition. It was just Sherpa. All the bacteria that helps disassemble the human body back to its basic components  had barely started to work their magic. Sherpa’s most currently noticeable smell came from the Arby’s roast beef sandwiches he’d slathered with diced garlic, the kind you can get at Costco in jars that should be reserved for WIC peanut butter. Big, bulky. Like Sherpa.

But the nacho “cheese” and garlic roast beef sandwiches were a welcome relief from Sherpa’s between-meals odor. He was greasy and old, like a skillet in a bachelor pad. Actually, exactly like Sherpa’s skillet in his bachelor pad.
He had wanted to go the the Mad Greek in Baker, but he was dead before the World’s Largest Thermometer poked into view, and Barbara had a feeling it might happen, so she wanted to get him fed before he went. She loved him. She was, despite everything, his mom.
Barbara steered into Luxor’s self-parking, found a spot, and opened the door. Another cliche came unbidden and then gleefully suffocated her. It’s a dry heat.

She looked over a Sherpa, shook her head, then reached over and closed his eyes. Just napping.
The insides of her baggy shorts stuck together and climbed up her thighs. Her bra bit and she felt the urge to give up, to just waddle into the air-conditioned casino and then out onto the streets of Las Vegas and disappear, leaving Sherpa to his fate. He wouldn’t know the difference. Probably. Maybe.
“Kids die in hot cars,” warned a poster near the elevator door.
Rumblings and voices boiled through the concrete parking garage: music for the wait.

Ding. Barbara smelled soap. She saw a family of bags corralled around a clutch of white legs, pale and thick. Barbara let her eyes flick up. Awkwardly disinterested. Good. She stepped just across the threshold, noted that “C” level was punched, then stared at the elevator wall.

Indigo Feed #1: I Walk Away

Loren Wood copyright 2013

I am going to Indigo to see what is really happening.

I am embarrassed to admit it, but the feeds drew me here. I am leaving Glya on Prime, among the net of my life, the blinking nodes that caught our lives together, the nodes that still ping from across the stars. At least when the receivers are repaired.

Emily Kray copyright 2013

Glya tried to convince me not to come, as much for herself as for me, as much for us as for our child. But how could I ever explain to child Pantil, with all the curious Indigo dark in her eyes, what the worlds without are like. There is no simulation to carry the dust that rises from tired boots.

And so I go to somehow make this journey hers. One day, I hope she will make Indigo's dust rise from her boot soles. One day, perhaps we will stand together on the shores of a shallow sea with the hard star rising and reach to each other in quiet communion. One day when the worlds understand what is happening on Indigo.

SEND MARK 1001.33.1453.1