Tentacles of Ritual and Secretions of Madness

part 5

The astronaut and moles were followed by the new Ambassador to the Earth Nations, his eminence the Mole from orbiting rock #22, which had been captured and resettled by the Space Moles out of the Eleventh Door and the planet known to earthlings as Stevens-Plot.

Lana was too dumb struck to stand. The astronaut was in a flight suit but wasn’t wearing a helmet and was totally recognizable as the infamous Steven Reparte who had gone through the Eleventh Door and come back again leading an army of Space Moles. The moles all looked the same except for their bright accoutrements which could be anything from sashes to top hats to full dress in any style imaginable. The leading moles were wearing belts full of gadgets and pinstriped neckties and were all holding batons that could have ceremonial or weapons. Lana didn’t know. She wanted a margarita.

The most conspicuous mole and obvious leader was wearing a full length bright red evening dress with spaghetti straps, a pilgrims buckle hat straight out of grade school Thanksgiving Day festivities (it might have been made from construction paper) , and was puffing on a Cuban cigar. It had the swagger of a deep space miner and the tact of Joe Pile Meany the Fifth, butcher of Outpost Farspeak. The Space Mole mashed out the half spent cigar on the back of his lieutenant’s head and spit on the singed bluegrass. “This place is a gob of assimilatude-beach-maggot tubeworm poo. But it will do. Bring in the bulldozers.” They gathered in a circle on Mr. Moony’s lawn, and the ambassador kicked over a flamingo lawn ornament that somehow hadn’t rolled over or burst into flames. “Mr. Reparte, thank you for delivering me from The Rock to here, this new embassy close to hills. Good hills for tunneling. And near a big water source, this river you call Ohio. Named for a great and obsolete leader I presume. The mole waved a thick, fuzzy finger at the astronaut, signifying he reply.

“It’s a good place, and a good river. I could have landed us a bit closer, of course.” Reparte had been convinced upon, by the MST operative, to fly out to orbiting rock #22 and bring down a small assembly of Space Moles. The ambassador liked the look of southern Ohio and personally picked out Mr. Moody’s home based on a hair-tea-soup witch’s reading conducted from earth’s orbit.

“No, no. We can bring the big river closer to us through this smaller river and rename it after I have been crowned and renamed. Duly.” The mole swiveled its tiny mole head on its thick neck and gazed into the neighboring yard. “Come, let us take control of this building and set up the business of diplomacy for this Earth. Chee, chee. Yesh. Release the pets, they must be famished. And bring the seated human from there; yes that reclining pigeon with blueish pants and stripy top.”

Lana tensed and stood, ready to back into her house, but a twosome of moles trotted over the fallen fence and escorted her back.

“Don’t worry, miss,” said Steven as he reached for her arm and took her from the not too gentle captain.

Together they walked to the house and one of the moles melted the locks with its baton. The mole stood aside and with supreme airs the ambassador stalked through the sliding glass enclosure into the dining room. Two feathery beasts with vestigial wings and three whip necks waving ahead of their surging torsos burst into the house amid the throng and took charge of the sofa and easy chair. Lastly came Steven and the girl. She was still sweating in the heat, and now the overly air-conditioned house gave her a chill, and she shivered. “It’s okay,” said the astronaut. He took off his flight jacket and put it over her shoulders.

The ambassador looked around the room. “Remove these things, and what is in those hanging containers?” The table chairs were hauled away and plates were taken from the cabinets and set around the kitchen table. “We are gathered here, in this place called Ohio. Lieutenant, has the sacrifice been watered?”

The lieutenant snatched one of beasts from the cushions. Its three necks, all ending with a single toothed maw and one faceted eyeball, thrashed. “Injected with the snoot-blood of a thousand ripe beach maggots.”

“Commence.”

The lieutenant hauled up the beast and slammed it onto the oak table, then with a swift move sliced through its wriggling tentacle heads with the baton. Slimy red goo spurted on to the surface, and the captains stepped forward to scoop the remains on plates and hold them into the air. The lieutenant picked a plate and raised it to the ambassador.

“I am ambassador to the Earth Nations, Holiest Lord Ohio.” The mole dipped a hand into the goo and slapped the hand over its right eye, leaving a bloody print behind. “You may all anoint me, including the local notable, Blue Pants.”

“Oh my God,” said Lana, shivering even deeper.

“No, only your most earth bound exalted.” In the end she dipped in a finger and put a dot of red onto his whiskered nose. The mole was delighted, and to end the ceremony it knocked over the table and laughed when the second beast rushed into the kitchen and feasted on the leftovers.

1420 Emerson Lane

part 4

Lana was hot, but the kids didn’t seem to notice the heat as they ran around the yard, jumping through a sprinkler while the sticky juice from popsicles dribbled down their arms. They weren’t her kids, but today she was supervising the neighborhood brats while the association parents held an emergency meeting in the Emerson Lane clubhouse. Which was air-conditioned, unlike her parent’s backyard. Lana’s jeans were rolled up to her knees and her feet were plunged into the kiddie pool. After being repeatedly splashed she finally gave up on the tepid romance novel her mother seemed to favor, and was resigned to torment and abuse. She was on her second Popsicle.

The kids started screaming, in itself not a concern because summertime kids do that, and when Lana opened her eyes, a couple of weird creatures skittered off the lawn and began climbing the privacy fence. They dropped over the side and crawled back up the coconut palm on the other side, in Mr. Mood’s yard. The animals were dog sized and armored, and in Ohio such things were seldom (as in never) seen, much like the palms that were sprouting and thriving up and down the street. They weren’t the strangest things Lana had seen, that would be the floating plastic gas sacks with eyes that swooped in slow motion over the rooftops. Only Emerson Lane seemed to be having these… problems. The 50 homes were ostracized by neighboring residents and the Wade Road people had blocked off their street access, so now the only way in and out was via Buckwheat Road, and most frightened drivers were taking lengthy detours to avoid that section.

The clubhouse was actually a meeting room in the old Moose Lodge, just a couple yards over, and Lana was thinking about corralling the dozen kids and marching them over to see what was the holdup. Just then the wind kicked up, then the dust and leaves swirled under a blast of hotter than normal seasonal air, and a righteous thrumming blotted out the senses. Everyone fell to the dry grass, scattering lawn chairs and Popsicle sticks, and a shadow momentarily blotted out the sun. Lana rolled her head and peeked through her splayed fingers. She watched as the aircraft, something between a jet and a flying saucer, hovered overhead then touched down noisily in neighbor Moody’s yard. The palm trees shriveled under the cooking engines and fell over, crackling into flames before foam spurted out of holes in the ship and put out the fires.

A section of the fence fell over, sending the kids into a second cacophony of shrieks, and a sudden quiet descended.  Lana gathered herself up from her undignified yard sprawl and righted the folding chair, which she sat upon while the children ran hither and fro, eventually all disappearing into the house where they hid behind the sofa. All but one little boy who crawled into her lap and continued to chew on his splintering stick.

Lana’s feet were in the pool and her left pant leg had fallen down and was soaking up the warm water. She watched as the newest strange thing on Emerson Lane happened. The residents by now were running up the street and she could hear Mr. Moody hollering about his perfect lawn, never mind that most of the shingles had blown off his roof onto his and the neighbor’s front yards. The space ship hissed and a hole opened in its side then a ramp pooped out and stuck in the ground. An astronaut strode expertly from the darkness followed by, of all things, a retinue of Space Moles.

Mathematics of Man

part 3


Blakely leads his president into the chamber and every one there rises until the president finds his seat and asks them to sit. “Nice to see you all this morning. Nicer to see the coffee,” then President Ivory Feldone settles in and smiles at the aid pouring him a hot cup.

Staffing was limited, thus the large table seated relatively few. Of the many positions and groups in the White House, security was the only one fully staffed, and even they did some double duty. After The Breach a lot of people here, there, and everywhere just seemed to drift off. Whether they were accounted for or not, many just were not where they were supposed to be. For the most part, since it seemed to be akin to epidemic, it couldn’t be helped, and so life went on.

The general of the armed services (all of them) spoke first. “Our Space Division reports a broad bombardment of the planet Jupiter, but not of any of the moons. Except for one of the inner moons, possibly Metis? Maybe that was accidental. Our astronomer in Hawaii isn’t sure if that will mess up the ring system or not.” General Dorflinapolis paused to sip from his mug. “They have nearly their whole armada out there. Just firing away all willy-nilly. Seem to be taking a break from it, for now.”

“Thanks George. Any communication with the Moles from our Rangers? I assume there’s been an effort.”

“Of course, sir. Yes. There has been some talk back and forth, but the damned rodents just chatter on in mole tongue. We can’t figure it out, been trying for months.”

Secretary Simmons slapped the table. “Why won’t those rats just speak English, we know they can!” she growled.

“Now Betty, let’s not use derogatory language against our new neighbors,” said the president, always cautioning, lest someone might be listening from somewhere, somehow. So very many things had changed over the prior months, and the best scientific minds hadn’t the first clue. The White House Science Advisor merely threw up his hands and migrated to New NewMexico with his wife, mother, and a pair of binoculars. New NewMexico was widely known for bird watching, and since The Breach, exotic species sightings were on the rise. Fun fact: New NewMexico’s Presidente Maximilian Benito Juarez III had recently outlawed all cats, snakes, and birds of prey from his borders. They were subject, on sight, on pain of death. Lesser dinosaurs were welcome, as they were technically-sort-of birds and mostly ate small mammals.

“I am sorry,” said Betty, “but what of the Space Rangers? Why don’t they put an end to this insanity?”

“The Rangers were never meant to go to war with invaders from another universe. Mostly they just patrol our inner system against rival governments and corporations gone amuck. And our numbers are few. The Moles have a fleet of many hundreds of ships,” explained the general. This was by now common knowledge, and the secretary knew it all.

“I think war is not an option, not even to discuss. Perhaps we were short sighted,” said Ivory. He meant that perhaps Moon State Tech was short sighted, because they had little government oversight. They may as well be the government, as they did whatever they wanted to, whenever they felt like it. Opening up a portal without any defense was not a brilliant move.

The twenty year anniversary of Moon State Tech’s trip down the rabbit hole had come and gone. Many expeditions had gone through the first ten doors and life was good. The Eleventh Door caused a big stir, and there was major religious uproar and some general resistance to its use. The usual probes went through, and they were retrieved at the genesis point where they were themselves probed, dissected, and evaluated for months. Nothing out of the ordinary was discovered, except that the Eleventh Door led to a place distinctly foreign to our galaxy, maybe not of our universe at all.

After that the Mega-space-crawlers went through, led by the now infamous Steven Reparte, resident astronaut. He left Earth system forever to become one of the leaders of a new world. Only he came limping back in his junk shuttle, leaving a trail of crumbs behind for any old space Mole to follow. There was more to it than that, of course. But the gist of the matter was, now the solar system was akimbo, the galaxy was cattywampus; space was full of rocks who’d lost their marbles.  Mathematics, arithmetic, and every slide rule and/or abacus in the Smithsonian’s Science Museum was bent or broken. Some other universe was leaking its own schisms into our own; the ultimate mixed drink. Earth and the surrounding concoctions of billions of years of star dust now faced an intangible era of hangovers and hangover cures.

“Well, there’s nothing for it,” said the president, standing. Around the room, lining the walls, were various portraits of former American presidents, and across from Ivory was an ornate,
gilded frame around an antique mirror. The lights seemed to dim because outside the clouds moved overhead and a morose lowing like that of a dozen cattle reverberated through the wood frames of the windows. In the mirror she was smoking again. She was the daughter he was meant to be, but for a moment lost one way or the other. Ivory wasn’t sure who was in charge now, but in the light of this new world, he didn’t see how it mattered much. “General, could you please organize an expedition to Jupiter? My sister and I will be the first president to visit an otherworldly alien delegation.” They stood and walked from the room, leaving the staff sitting, speechless.

His aid jumped up hastily and followed helplessly behind. “Where are you going now, sir?”

“To the garden of course, to walk my stegosaurus.”

Lost and Found in the Old Corner Bookstore

part 2

It's engineered old school. Nobody does late 19th century aesthetics like new school architects.

 What's old is new; what goes around comes around; starve a fever, feed a cold. Or is it the other way 'round? "Lol," I crack myself up. The book I'm reading, more like perusing, is a reconstructed Dickens' tome. Nobody now remembers 'Dickens', but if they could read they would certainly know his work: his words have been burgled and regurgitated in countless bastardizations over the centuries. No, my little shop isn't really patronized by the educated so much as by home décor specialists looking to fill space between tchotchke on oak veneer bookcases. Nothing original exists anymore, not from that era. Unless it's in an underground refrigerator off limits to anyone without white gloves and a chrome loupe.

I'd just about given up on the wordy bleakness of Bleak House, when the quaint bell tinkles gleefully the arrival of company. "Welcome, let me know if there's anything I can...".

"I like what you've done with Betty Lou," she says, sweeping her gaze thoughtfully over the surfaces. The glare damping, concave edges of the mega-space-crawler's shuttle were now hidden by scavenged shelving and musty hardcovers. "Could hardly tell your shop is a spaceship the way you've built up the façade. Though technically, this is Moon State property. Just saying."

Uh oh. "Like, you know." I'm always glib when trouble walks in. I shelve Dickens, then I take him back down because I have a feeling I might need something lengthy and acrostic over the impending... doom, doomness, unbearable time and distance? "We're in mothballs now, or can't you smell that through the static you're wearing?" You can recognize a Moon State Tech operative simply by the brand of chrome they garnish their jackets with.

"Will it help if I buy something? What about that there, it must be very good the way you're fondling it." She reaches for my Dickens. Alicia Tenweight, MST operative extraordinaire. She debriefed me - sorry for all the double entendres, seriously, there was, is, never will be anything other than business between us - on my return from the Eleventh Door. As if the trip back to the solar system wasn't bad enough.  "Oh my...".

I snatched it back. "Mine! Besides, you couldn't appreciate Mrs. Winklebottom. Now, Ms. Tenweight, my original unfinished question remains...".

Obviously these modern times had become precarious. But isn't that what happens when someone cracks Pandora's Box wide open? The Ten Doors were no longer uncharted territory. They were established thoroughfares to exotic new planets in otherwise unreachable systems of the Milky Way Galaxy. Going through the portals was easy, and scientifically sound. And everything on the other sides could be explained and a lot of it lived with and brought back. The Ten Doors weren't the problem.

Alicia gave up on Dickens. Just like she'd given up on me those many months ago. She turned to the shelves across from the counter and brushed a fingertip along the spines on a stack, then stopped at a particularly worn one and pulled it down. "Your Moles are making a mess of Jupiter, though I suppose it will come through no worse for wear. But the havoc they've brought from beyond the Eleventh Door, that's something else. Steven, you should never have come back."

It was true, quarantine rules were not followed. The Moles had no use for our rules, and the Moles didn't give me much say. I had become their prisoner, and their pawn. "We've been through this, and I'm more than sorry. But for now I have nothing left, but this decommissioned ship-shop, and my books," here comes my feline accomplice, whom I allow to rub up against my arm, "and Sally here. And Linus who detests customers... as do I." Sally purrs and slinks off, probably to pester her peevish brother.

“Nevertheless,” Alecia says. And she turns to leave, shelving the book. “A truck is on the way, Steven. And boxes,” she says and the tiny bell tinkles when the doors swings open. “Lots and lots of boxes.” One door opens, and another door closes.

the cigarette in the mirror is not hers

part 1

The call comes in at approximately 3:30, a time he isn’t accustomed to being humanly coherent, though his dreams are usually rolling full bore. A gentle hand caresses his sleeping, relaxed shoulder, and Ivory’s eclectic gears grind to a flickering halt. He wakes lying on his back staring into the face of his door warden.  “Billiam. Bad timing, I was kissing an alligator.”

 “Oh, sounds like perfect timing,” says William Blakely, the president’s personal coffee cup holder and in extreme moments, bodyguard. “But in a more lucid reality, there is a stegosaurus on the lawn, and Jupiter is being bombed.” William turns to take a tray from kitchen staff that entered the room and instructs the president to sit up. “Coffee first, and a Danish.”

 “Joy.” He takes a bite of Danish and sips the hot coffee. “Last time Steggy was out was, say, Easter? Ate all the fancy eggs. That was only one of the low points of my tenure.”

 “Most presidents have a dog.”

 The reclining president sips longer and louder. The coffee has cooled, and it’s really good. He says so, “It’s good. Now… Jupiter: is this Florida, because that might explain the alligator dream, or that big gas giant a billion, billion miles away?”

 Blakely takes the tray while President Ivory Feldone swings his legs over the bedside and finishes off his coffee. “It’s the planet, and a fair distance, but only about a half billion. The team is assembling.”

 “K,” says the president and unfolds in his customary morning fashion, with a grunt. “Quick shower and I’ll be down. Thanks, Bill.” These early morning meetings aren’t usual, but also not unheard of. He passes the window and peeks through the drapes into the early morning gloom. The city is dimly lit at 3:30, but enough to casts shadows, and the biggest shadow lumbers by blocking out a street light. It halts under his window and lifts an enormous head and bellows mournfully. “Quiet girl,” he says and taps the pane. "Quiet, Karina." She blinks a cumbersome lid and pads by, leaving heavy prints in the dewy grass.

 Inside the on suite, Ivory starts the shower and picks through a drawer for some undergarments.  Today he picks avocado themed socks and a present from his late wife, Underdog briefs. “It’s an Underdog sort of day,” he mutters, and leans onto the sink before picking up his toothbrush. The shower is roaring behind him and the face in the glass isn’t his, but a woman who looks uncannily like a mix-up of his mother and his older sister Gardenia. “More surprises,” he muses, then reaches for a pack of cigarettes and bumps one out. “I know I shouldn’t shmoke,” he says to the somewhat familiar woman. That’s, at least, what his wife always told him.

 “You should listen. Besides, no matches,” she replies, taking a deep drag from her own. Ivory regrets the red glow that flares up in the mirror. “Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” she says and flicks the spent fag at the glass. It sprays his morphing image with sparks, that die as quickly as the fog from the hot shower clouds his looking glass.