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