Knightfall: Under the Snail's Banner PT II

Knightfall: Under The Snail's Banner PT II

by Graham Swanson 

Baldwin awoke bound in plate in a field of flowers. Bugs crawled under his armor. The sun

appeared from the ridge of dark clouds and turned the dew on the petals gold. Lilac vapor

seeped from gaps in his armor as he reached out. He stretched his fingers feeling for the

warmth of Fred’s fur. But his fingers only touched more grass. 

Baldwin jumped up. 

“Fred!” He called out, looking in every direction. “Fred!” 

His eyes widened as he scanned the open spaces. He left his weapons and loot behind as he darted around the top of the hill. The snail banner flew over his camp. 

“Fred!” 

A neigh stretched from the mud pools. Baldwin ran through the grass, kicking flowers to dust, and stomping on snakes as he hurried. Then it saw it stretch before him. Below the cliffs. Up the slopes. Against the ridges. Under young trees. 

Hauberks covered in steaming mud. Bent poles gnashed against cages of spikes. Blunted helmets left buried in crumbs from an ancient mountain. Spirits played above the crushed siege towers and splintered weapons.  But Baldwin saw many battlefields.

Battles with magic, with guns, with huge monsters that emerged from the ground to eat the moons. Battles won by guile. Battles lost by mistrust. All ended with projectiles in the ground, with starved looters descending from the hills, and the stench of manblood so strong that it clouded the sun. Many shields broke. Many horses collapsed. 

This one didn’t have a single bone littering the ground. The spirits raced balls of flame that still permeated in the hanging air. The blood pools didn’t sink into the ashcrest. They turned to chalk that hung over the cusp of the vielpocket.

“Fred!” 

The horse neighed from beyond the vielpocket. Baldwin pinched his sword against his belts as he scanned for exit points, then scanned for a route around the cradle of crescent archways and spearholds to the other side. He jumped down a cliff, sprinted across a bridge weakened by so many cracks that he felt the wind push crumbs up through the sandstone. As he crossed what lay beyond appeared from behind the chasm barrier. Up the opposite slope was a stairway. 

He held his breath. The stairs were cut into the mountain. Only halfway done. At the top stood a temple with no walls. Only a bathing chamber that never got to shimmer with sacred water. Cinders and shade floated over the top where the ceiling should’ve been.  

He heard a big cat nearby. It sat on a wall covered in vines. Baldwin thought it sounded like a cat he knew. A cougar of the wastes. He turned around and saw it recline with long legs, slick fur, murky eyes pulled wide by the hunter’s gaze. He knew better than to draw his knife against it, and he lamented leaving his spear back behind him. However the creature didn’t pounce on him. It studied his armor, but couldn’t be sure if it was the same man under the plate. 

“I’ve been here before.” Baldwin thought. 

Baldwin began to feel the drain of hunger and thirst as he climbed down and crossed the battlefield. He heard Fred from the top of the stairs. But he no longer hurried. He knew what awaited him. The big cat followed behind him. If he slowed down to pick sandcutters out of his sock it roared at him. If he went a little faster it would run up from behind and close the distance. At the top of the stairs he saw the heap of raw materials. Blocks cut by a saw. Statues of heroes became crystalized in salt. They had been carted to the hilltop, but never mounted. 

Wild geese landed on the shoulders of the statues. They hissed at Baldwin. 

When he arrived Fred sat comfortably in the bath. It had been filled with silt from decades of exposure. A Witchfaun in a black dress sat in the air. Huge horns adorned her head. Green moss covered her arms and hid her face. 

“It still hurts where you wounded me.” she said to him. 

“It is my duty.” 

“To burn me?”

Baldwin crossed his arms.

“Yes, if it serves the promised land.” 

“Is that why you have that horn?” 

“I know not of what you speak.”

“You know… the alicorn.” 

Baldwin tilted his helmet. 

“It was an evil unicorn.” 

“It wasn’t evil, you moron. You killed it so no one else could claim to have done it.” 

“It could’ve fallen in the hands of an enemy. It’s better this way.” 

“What enemy? You were sworn to protect places like this… and when you did that… It’s why our temple was never finished.”

She lowered her legs and she settled over Fred’s back. Silt poured from the great faucet over the bath. Stars shined in the middle of the day. The sun fell on them both, and their shadows met. 

“I will fulfill my Oath. That's all there is to it.” 

She rode Fred over to Baldwin, and climbed off. 

“Does that Oath mean anything now?” She gestured to the wide open world where there were meant to be walls. 

Fred stayed with the Witchfaun.

“Until I die again.” 

“You didn’t protect the promised land. You amputated it.” 

“I did as I was sworn.” 

“You can say that. But we remember. This temple remembers.” 

She grabbed her broom and jumped off a cliff. 

Baldwin rested there. 

“I am in an ended world. I will remain as I was sworn. Even if I alone am bound.”

-

Baldwin snuck deep into the trees growing from the thorny vines that ran along the patches of creek water. He came across the faun’s camp. He followed the smoke from her broom, and the scent of her cauldron. Once there he darted out, took her familiar cat, and ran off. He kept the cat cradled in one free arm as he sprinted back to where he left Fred. As he ran he heard a burst of smoke ring within his helmet. A dull ache caused his eyes to swell up, and his ear drums to be swallowed by muffled quakes. He pounded on the side of the helmet where his ears should’ve been. Bright crosses of bloodflame burst from rolling balls of smoke. A haze settled over his eyes until he waved it away with his glove. Then he felt two objects bouncing on his head. His brow lowered against the lense of his visor. He reached up to feel it. Maybe it was just some foliage that got stuck there. Instead he felt something long, soft, and leathery. He could hear creeping steps of a creature deep in the woods. He could hear the patter of mice in the ground. The swoop of cavehawks. He checked in the gleam of his gauntlet. 

Rabbit Ears. 

Rabbit Ears stuck up from his helmet. He tugged on them. He felt pressure on his ear drum. The sound of wind on the ocean. He could hear the Witchfaun cackle as he rode into the gloom. 

-

Baldwin panicked in his armor. If the Legendary Neo found him like this, he would be cast out for impurity. Fred pulled towards camp, but Baldwin fought against the reins. Fred slowed down to a grinding trot.

“No, we must stop first at a grave.” 

Fred groaned.

“We must undo this hex before Lord Neo can meet us.” 

Fred sighed.

“Come along, Fred. Time is not immortal.” 

Fred rolled his eyes, and let Baldwin steer him back to the battlefield. It was for naught, as among the carnage of steel and broken halbards, they didn’t find a single bone. Confused, they rode off to search caves until they discovered a tomb. A body wrapped in a sheet deep within the flooded sinkholes. Pressed deep where no one could find it, but watched over by a ghost. 

The ghost welcomed Baldwin and Fred to the tomb, put wreaths of doomflower around their necks to protect their necks to prevent necromancy. Baldwin tore his apart and marched into the tomb. 

The way to the body was sealed by a blockade of small boulders. He used a geomany rune to turn the rocks into sand. 

The ghost scoffed. 

“I thought knights considered magic a heresy.” 

He riffled through the drops and deposits, he pressed his armor through a rathole, and came out to the other side. A beam of light descended from the closed ceiling. The air smelled toxic. Wet. Bones of animals that couldn’t escape littered the ground. In a tight space he found a shroud. He pulled it out of its resting place. A tight hole corkscrewed under a narrow tunnel. And he tore it open. He wrenched the skull free, and exited leaving the remains uncovered. 

“Could you at least cover me back up?” the ghost asked.

Baldwin ignored him. 

He got back on Fred.

“With what’s left of the alicorn, we should be able to undo this.” 

Fred neighed in relief. 

They slept outside the cave for the night. The ghost floated over him all night. In the morning they rode off for camp. A flash of color flew over the site. The outline of the banner. Baldwin’s heart leapt when he saw its shape high over the hillcrest. 

But as it developed from the smoke and gloom in the air, something seemed wrong. The Snail’s Lance was pointed the wrong way. “That’s not right,” he thought. As they rode up the slope, where the dust gave way to grass and flowers, he noticed its shell was upside down. Its crown was upside down. The whole thing was upside down. Desecrated! 

He stopped Fred. His rabbit ears picked up a scuffle, and a mild laughter. He charged forward, wide eyes, his heart pounding, his fists tightened around the reigns. He gasped as he saw it fall to the ground. He jumped off Fred who kept running. He landed hard on his knees but he got up despite the pain in his joints and rushed to scoop up the banner. 

From the fallen trees he heard familiar voices. They couldn’t stop giggling. He turned to them. Brow lifted, mouth tight, neck muscles swollen. 

“Come out. I can hear you. Why have you done this?”

The gnome- the very gnome he left in the sink jumped out. As did a few faces he recognized  from the knight encampment from before. 

“You fool! The Snail banner hasn’t flown in forever.” 

“Who uses snails like that anyway?” 

“Yeah, I step on them at night all the time.” 

“Real tough. I’m sure you scared lots of enemies with your snail.” 

Baldwin was aghast. 

“You don’t understand. The snails helped our order defeat the pointy ears when no one else would.”

The Orc in armor appeared. No helmet. Tight white braided hair. Pointy black lips, sharp black ears.

“And for that you brought the Valkyrie's wrath upon us!” He said. 

“We didn’t know what the Valkyrie would do. Ryo the Orc philosopher couldn't predict it. Your kind was always being routed by the pointy ears. By defeating them, we cleared the path for your future.” 

“My kind was exiled to frozen caves because of your order.”

“You eat people!”

“Yeah, well, people taste good.” 

“How about you behold the banner of the new promised land?”

“A new WHAT?” Baldwin fell back on his heels. 

“That’s what the rumor is. We’re going to bring this to Neo and find out for ourselves.” 

They unfurled a banner with a slick, mean, firebreathing dragon. 

“Have you even met a dragon? They have no love for armor or  the flesh within.” 

“No, but it’s fearsome and inspires confidence. Unlike your snail.” 

The Orc stepped forward.

“And can you explain THIS?” He unwrapped a paper scroll and held out the partially ground up alicorn. 

Baldwin was silent. 

“And why do you have a skull? Who even was that?” 

“Necromancy.” He uttered. “I needed it to undo the hex of a witch.”

“You’re worried about witches?” 

“Yes, the-”

“We don’t care about witches anymore.”

“What?”

“Not really. We all use magic now. You do too. But we’d never stoop to necromancy.” 

“But, my ears-”

“So what? Times have changed. Look around. We’ve all been cursed. We were born cursed.” 

Baldwin’s heart pounded. He could feel it pulse in the length of his rabbit ears.

“In my time, knights would draw swords on each other for disrespecting a banner. Temples went to war.” 

“But now the temples are gone. You had something to do with that, right?” 

Baldwin was silent. 

“Times have changed, old man. You’re either with the New Promised Land, or you belong sealed up in a temple catacomb. Lost and forgotten.” 

The Orc dropped the alicorn. 

They wandered off and left Baldwin alone in his camp. He sat there all night staring at the snail on his banner.  He touched the upper tentacles. The sensory pads on the bottom of its body. Snails have no ears. They sense vibration. They ignore the clamor of the world, and focus on what actually moves it. 

“Never before has there been a more noble warrior.” 

The familiar cat meowed in its sack. Baldwin forgot all about it. He sighed. He used an air rune to fill up a balloon, and he wrote the Faunwitch's name on it, tied it to the cat bag, blew on it, and watched it take off over the veil. His ears picked up the sounds of the cat scratching at the bag. He hoped it wouldn’t tear it open before it reached her. He went to sleep, wrapped in his banner, and in the morning, his ears were back to normal. 

-

Baldwin didn’t ride off to meet Neo right away. He rode back to the unfinished temple and the litter on the battlefield where the spirits remained. He spent the remaining season wrapping the fallen suits in funeral shrouds. He finished cutting the stairs into the mountain. And though the statues were damaged, he found one small one, not a hero at all, just a giant sword, the symbol of a lowly huscarl. He mounted it alongside the temple. He shoveled out the dust from the bath, and turned on the faucet tap. Nothing came out. He crawled through the mountains, mended damage to the pipes, opening the valves, sticking water runes inside. When he turned on the faucet again, it dripped. He sighed. Someday, in maybe another lifetime, it would be full again.

-

He spent one last night sleeping in the temple. He drew Fred over to the fire. He rubbed the face of his visor. 

“Fred, I’m sorry I turned you from a human into a horse. I didn’t know it was permanent. I needed a horse. It was a mistake.” 

The horse neighed and lowered its head on his lap. 

In the distance, he heard a company of marching men. They moved in a wedge formation. Towards Neo’s resting place. 

A star turned red. The doomstar. It shined upon them. A Valkyrie shot across the night sky and left a ray of light behind her so bright that it turned into a borealis as it burned out. 

“We will have to see this New Promised Land for ourselves.”

Weed Killer

Weed Killer

There is a magic plant that will ease the suffering of the innocent. 

A doctor can't prescribe it. 

A farmer can't grow it. 

Yet it is all over. 

Against the toxic chemicles used to kill it. 

Just like a fatal ash that is caused by the chemicle gloom that rises in the morning

and blows into your windows when the wind is right. 

If one person suffers because it is forbidden

then it is the tyrants who wears the torturer's black hood 

by leaving them in a bed of spikes 

like some wounded civil war soldier crawling to the shade 

where the skies are vast but the towns are miniscule 

Where sirens ring from the town over

Where agonized victims remember the faces of those who abandoned them

They are the ghosts of the plains that haunt us!

Knightfall: Under the Snail's Banner PT I

Knightfall: Under the Snail’s Banner

By Graham Swanson

Part I

Baldwin kicked out the fire and pulled his horse under the gatehouse. Rain pelted his armor and washed into his eyes. Thunder shook the mountains under his feet as storm clouds poured and the dragons in the distance bathed in its shower.

The promise he made lingered on his lips. He crawled in through a gap where a stained glass mural once was. The tapestries had rotten to green strands. Animals made homes where grass plumed from the fractures in the floor. Large pools sat stagnant where once noble warlords gathered. Baldwin listened to the clink of his armor echo against the high ceiling. He maintained the procedure he was trained to follow a century ago. Visor down. Spear on his shoulder. Emblem of the warrior snail facing the lady of the altar where he made his oath. He pressed a witch's stone against his eye. A marble box appeared on the altar. He marched down the aisle. He passed pillars and broken weapons. Skeletons of the temple's loyal servants lay scattered on the floor. Lightning outside flashed against the steel of his helmet.

The box became an ornate case. Decorated in the sculptures of ancient history. On the lid was the model of a lady in a funeral shroud. Baldwin stepped up to it. It seemed to sink into the floor before him. The relics he placed on the altar remained.

He rested his spear on the floor and knelt before the sarcophagus. Baldwin stepped up to it. It's silence rumbled.. He drew his ceremonial sword and stabbed it into the floor and mounted the lid. He rocked his body back and forth until it grinded.First it made rough scratching sounds, then dust beganto spill to the floor. Then a loud CRACK ruptured under his thigh. He felt the ridges of broken stone press agaisnt the fabric of his pants. The flowers and goblets fell. He got off, and pushed the lid off on top of them. He pushed so hard that the almost fell in. He tossed out the bones, the shroud, the jewelry, even the crown. He retrieved a dagger that he had once placed in her cold dead hands. Now bones confined the handle. He popped each knuckle to wrench the small weapon free.

The dagger Baldwin took out was now corroded with grime, but it had a magical property he desired. He dusted it off, held it into the light, he touched the point with his gloved finger tip. He nodded, hurled his cape over his shoulder, and crawled back out.

He told Fred as they rode through the golden mist. Sharp cliffs surrounded them. The sky was leaden with dark clouds. Barbed plants grew up the sharp angles of the rocks. Man eating mushrooms drew the attention of aviators with their bright color and snared them before they realized what it was.

"This land was once rich and the people loved their knights. We lived by honor. We protected the legacy of the promised land. Now look at it. We will restore what we lost.

-

The last unicorn slept soundly in the clearing deep within the forest. Baldwin crawled through the broken branches and grass. Fred crept up behind him. They slid through the mud past the tree line. The clearing opened up like a meadow. They both glanced at the gentle weight of a sparkling outline. Rays of sunlight shined from all directions. Nymphs flew in a circle overhead with bark in their mouths. Warmth reflected from the moisture on the blades of grass. The moons aligned.

Baldwin listened to the creature purr as it slept. It kicked as it dreamed of soaring across the heavens. He couldn't believe he actually found it. Legends told of the unicorn going extinct. But here one was. On a platter of soil. Its wings were curled under its body. The alicorn slumped as it rested its head.

Baldwin learned the art of stealth in his courses. He pulled himself through the grass. Gently. Green leaves stuffed the gaps of his armor. Webs from the bugs jammed the air holes in his mouth cover. Very gently. His boots dragged behind him. He saw the bugs nesting in the unicorn's silver fur. The scent of its must flooded his visor. Strawberry. It filled his sinuses until his mouth tasted it. Then he heard it purr as a bird landed on its horn to rest its wings.

Baldwin pounced with the dagger in hand.

He left the meadow tying a sack. He got on Fred and rode off back to camp.

The alicorn was used to make a powerful healing elixir strong enough to bring someone back from the brink of death. Baldwin felt a cold coming on. He sneezed red spray that smelled like strawberry.

He told Fred

"A sacred creature wasted in sleep is a sin. Power exists to be used."

-

Baldwin was feeling hungry. He checked his sack. The mushrooms, the corn, the salted meat bars. All gone. He shrugged. Seemed full last time he checked. turned it inside out, but found no food. He sighed and hung his head until he saw them. Human peasants.

Human peasants walking along a strip of crops. Not a single one had a sword. Their village was wide open, stuffed with dry hay and timber. He thought "A man who refuses a blade refuses his own protection. The world owes him nothing after that". He rallied forth, drew his spear, and trampled down the field.

-

Baldwin bathed Fred in the long winding river of Toast besides the bones of a mammoth. The Toast river rang up the length of the entire continent. Its waters led the earliest humans across the land as they conquered the known world and liberated it from the pointy eared menace. He pondered the many histories and myths of its water. Then he heard a scream.

Baldwin hurried from the sunken bar to where the river washed up tree trunks and debris from the cities. He hurried onto the sand. The shouting came from behind a mesh of moss and webs. He used a fire rune, said "Hail Moloch" to cast its spark to cut through it. He stood on top of a small cove. He looked below into a pool separated from the body of the river. Submerged in the mud, he saw a turned over wagon with a broken wheel. A treasure chest sunk into the mud.

Beneath the wagon, a gnome was pressed down. His face was bruised, his hair was wet, his legs were caught and pinned. The gnome calmed down when he saw Baldwin.

"Oh, thanky, great sir knight. I was sure to perish when.... what are you doing?"

Baldwin cracked the lock of the chest open with his boot.

"Don't get into that!"

Baldwin scooped out the contents and dumped them into a sack. Then he saw something that shocked him. A banner with the warrior snail.

The gnome kept protesting. Baldwin took one look at the gnome, took the banner, then climbed back up with the riches. The gnome began to panic.

“No, don’t go!”

Baldwin did not react. He climbed out of the sink and returned to Fred.

He cleaned the banner and rubbed out the wrinkles. He picked out the thorns and sand cutters.

“The weak aren’t meant to win,” Baldwin said. “They’re meant to be protected.”

He adjusted the banner on his saddle. “And protection requires strength."

Baldwin rode off with Fred with loot and the banner on his saddle.

"That banner does not belong in the mud. It was doomed with that gnome."

-

Baldwin ate his dinner in a cave. Cookies made from the chocolate of the dark empire and fried chicken. Outside dead trees moaned as monsters paraded in the moonlight. When finished he tossed the bones into the fire and watched them burn up. He kept the banner wrapped around his armor. It made him feel warm. It reminded him of his once beloved lord. The oath he took was on the tip of his tongue. To protect the land. To maintain the banner of the warrior snail.

You are exiled for the sake of the realm!

He almost told Fred what happened. He hung his head low, choked, then shrugged and pulled out his pillow.

“I was sworn to this land before it forgot what that meant. Oaths don’t break. Men do.”

-

Baldwin rode Fred down the sandpits and to the gravel lanes where the avalanches seeped snow and volcanic ash to the grounds below. Baldwin saw it in the distance, and pulled the reins to steer towards it. An archway formed by the wind. He circled around and changed course.

This land didn't look like it once did. The ground was white like salt. Dirt flew into his mouth. Graveyards went on for miles. He rode through the tar and smoke from a smoldering volcanic pit. He rode up and down huge fissures in the ground. He heard drums and footsteps in the distance.

Baldwin and Fred came to a camp. Smoke rose from tents, voices sang out the ballads of the chivalrous Neo who led the paladins of old to the promised land and slew the dark army of pointy ears. Baldwin rode forth with the banner of the snail. The knights there didn't raise their spears or horns nor did they ride unto him with their banners. They didn't even notice. The snail banner hadn't flown for ages. They didn't care.

Their armors were dull and unpolished. They had hand axes, not swords or spears. Some even kept their helmets off. They were unbathed, uncaped. With their faces slumped into their fists. They drank beer and said things like

"Back when the Majesty still held, everyone knew their place. Mage, priest, and the rest of them. Roads were cleaner then. Didn’t have errant striders wandering through like they owned the dust."

Baldwin looked at them. His eye bulged against the slots of his helmet. They looked upon him with suspicion. When he waved, they turned their heads or made rude gestures. Some put their noses up. Others cowarded away.

"Good men of faith! I swore my oath here when this valley still held. Game in the brush. Green on the stone. Then the wars came. And with them… everything that follows war. You see what’s left.”

The knights continued ignoring him.

Baldwin noticed an Orc in knight's plate. He jolted in place when he saw his green skin. Calcium deposits instead of facial hair that looked like short studded spikes. The Orc had heard it all before. He just kept chewing the mites out of his cowl.

"Forsooth! We bled to keep their kind beyond the line, and now they ride it in steel?"

"He's an Orc. But he wears the armor."

"That’s how it starts. You make room for one exception… and the rule-"

Then the wind swept hard from above as a shriek loud enough to pierce the sky rang out. A laser beam shot down. Two silver shards rode down it. Within a second the shards and laser manifested into the shape of a winged woman darting to the ground with her spurred boot raised.

Her wings opened and an opposing wind was reflected back onto the knights. She held the dewinging lance in one hand, and a horn in the other. When she landed it sent a shockwave across the land that tossed waves out of the Toast River and caused the dogs to flee the cities.

"Hark! I am Hridmaidra! There's two more of us coming!" She shot back into the sky like a laser beam from a distant planet.

Static filled the air as another laser beam shot from the opposite horizon. This time the Valkyrie skidded her lance across the ground and left a cut deep enough to create electricity. The knights began unbuckling their armor as their hairs raised. Baldwin stood there and watched. The electricity buzzed his armor. If she wanted to kill them, she'd not have let them know she was there at all.

"Hark! I am Vindspjot! There's one more coming!" She said as she circled around them, creating a cyclone of air.

In the center of the cyclone landed one final Valkyrie. Adorned in chrome. Her eyes covered in platinum lenses.

"Hark! I am Himinvodra! Neo is back from the dead. You will want to follow him. He'll tell you to. If you do, there will be hell to pay!" She hurled her flaming lance into the face of a volcano and vaulted back into the heavens.

The ground shook hard enough to throw the tents into the air. The knights bounced on the ground as mud and shards of gravel covered them like a blanket. The blast ruptured their eardrums. A massive back cloud shot out across the sky and covered the sun as flaming meteors pummeled the ground. A volcano blew up. The knights scattered into pieces and fled the land before lava submerged the land.

Baldwin jumped onto Fred and ignored the howling and cries for rescue. They raced away, up a trail that took him to higher elevation. From there he rode until moisture appeared on the ground again. He rode through the night and the morning. Finally found a quiet place to make a fire and rest.

Baldwin brushed Fred and watched the sky where the Valkyries vanished.

“They’ve been saying the same thing for generations,” he muttered.

Then he looked toward the distant horizon. The smoke hadn’t settled. Something. Or someone. Had returned. He adjusted the banner of the snail on his shoulder.

“…If he truly came back,” Baldwin said quietly, “then he’ll remember what this place was meant to be.”



He pulled the reins. Fred turned toward the ash.

Moon Song

 Moon Song

I walk with you on the Moon

I want the clouds to touch it so that you will look more beauitiful in the light

I want it's palaces to envelpoe us so that we may live in this moment forever

I wish we could howl.

The night is haunted by a spectre called the Moon

It is a guardian that sheilds us from the flying stars sent by Mars to kill us

It is the walker of the ocean who pulls the tide by its leash 

It's not a planet, but a bell that used to be a part of the Earth 

It broke away to be the warden of its own worldspace.

Tyrants and the eternal kings have claimed it for themselves

It's love is equal to the stars

and greater than the Moon 

Its love is a gravity that pulls the moon like a silver wagon 

It's light is the surface compounded with mirror dust

It's craters are the ramps of a cosmic skatepark

It's gravity is soft like a basketball player in hangtime

Bring me there

Marshall Moon

You are the captain of the ship that drives the tide 

You are the love that unites the world

and fixes our eyes on your mightiest creation

I take my helmet off

It's cold leaves white scabs on my neck.

My lungs fill with black air.

The glass from the helmet breaks

and I crawl out from the manhole cover.

How nice it would be to be a face on the Moon

Or to find a new color

For us, let it not die forever. 

That moment we shared under the moon in a hostile land.

Starved, hunted, we were led by the hunter's light. 

A Full Moon.

 

Thank you for reading :)

Micheal: A brief review of Pre Horror

Micheal: A brief review of  Pre Horror 

The performances are 9/10. The story follows what was probably true. The animals are cute. The only part that slows the movie down is when Micheal is watching TV and he gets an idea for a song. Maybe it really happened this way, but from a story structure stand point, it bleeds the film of its drama. That doesn't doom the movie though. This film's mission is to set the stage, establish who Micheal was before 1988. It does that in a heartfelt way. The sequel will finish the story, and im not privy to this, but I bet the sequel's tragedy will make us wish for quaint moments of the first movie that we easily missed.

That being said,but what does this film say about horror today?

It’s haunted by a silence. The audience knows that the innocence will end. An inevitable doom hangs over the peaceful scenes. It creeps in when Micheal complains about the size of his nose. Or when Micheal is dancing in a sound booth, no sound other than his voice and the patter of his feet. These subtle cracks hint at the dread that he will face later.

The film’s wholesomeness disguises these public perceptions of downfall.

Innocence, beauty, childhood, family life, the animals. The audience knows that they will become corrupted. Not because they deserve it, but because it is fragile. When Bubbles makes his first appearance, it’s heartwrenching. Not just because the chimp wears an adorable diaper, but because we see how delicate Micheal’s psychology is. We know the animals will not end up with Micheal in the end. They serve as symbols of his innocence, and we know it won’t last.

The drama is increased by these decisions, but what matters here is that none of this happened over night. It’s not a horror film, but is it uncanny. The constant physical changes that Micheal endures throughout his life lead to the horror of who he will ultimately become. The horror is the process of transforming into Micheal Jackson.

A normal boy is transformed into the mask of a celebrity. His body is beaten until he moves like he has no bones. He is isolated until all he can think about is the show. Then he begins altering the man into a superstar. It starts with a flanel shirt. Then a nose job. Then a greater transformation happens after the Pepsi incident. The man we see at the end is no longer the little boy we saw in the beginning, and there’s calm before the storm.

Micheal succeeds not in shocking the audience, but by letting them simmer with what they already know. It’s calm and sincere, but there’s a shadow over Micheal since the very beginning. It feels like pleasant memories before everything goes downhill. The kind moments when Micheal is spending time with sick kids. It tickles our sympathies because we know it won’t last. If the sequal follows this path, then it will be more than a biopic. It will the most epic tragic film of the 21^st century.

Thank you for reading :)

No Crows At The Funeral

No Crows At The Funeral

by Graham Swanson

Accident

The other paramedics still talk about what happened to Rob. He was the best. Been there for 27 years. Smart guy, always fixing something, always working on a gizmo. He had been a medic, a fire fighter, a school counselor, 9/11 dispatcher, and was nice to everyone. He could make routes no one else could find, on the road and in the mind. He knew everything about the human body and trauma. To us, he was a great healer to the community. Then that 3 year old...

 I don't know why. He just froze up.

 He was different after that. He was always perky before, but after that he began brooding and spoke abruptly. No good mornings, always grumpy, and quick to anger with the new guys. Until an accident happened. Then he wouldn't stop laughing.

 Even in the face of death itself. 

Like he knew it would happen.

The stress, you know. He did a lot for the county. We figured something weird would occur sometimes but not to this guy. I went to his home for dinner. Met his family. A farm with a small orchard of peaches and chickens. 

He wanted to show me something. 

He took me into the lounge he had been working on. It smelled stale. The ground was still dirt. He had it laid out on the workbench. 

    "Here's how the next wreck should happen." He had it all drawn out on a big map. Like he was planning construction. 

I finally had enough. I couldn't keep watching this man go on. I said to him, "It's over, Rob. She died." 

He stopped what he was doing.

It looked like he was listening so I kept talking.

"You can't control accidents." 

“The next crash will be a seven car pile up on the interstate. No fatalities.” 

"No it won't be."

I left him there.

After that he never laughed again. He did his job perfectly, but one day he forgot to tighten a wheel on the stretcher. They strapped an old woman to it and it rolled into the blackened river. The old woman vanished. Search teams from several states converged on the river. They found nothing.

So they took away his liscense and he lost his job.

Rob didn't finish the work on his lounge. It remained walls of aluminum panels and foam. His orchard failed. The peaches became fuzzy. He told me they weren't fruit at all, but body parts that pumped blood and reacted to the heat from his hand when he touched them. 

Then the farm itself changed.

It rained that day. Just a little bit to soak up the dry layer of dust. Not enough to rinse the cars off. The demon king's tree always leaned over the road. It's trunk was so gnarled that it looked like a monster took a bite out of it. It was a scar from a fight that happened over 1000 years ago

The corn grew itself that year. Rob didn't step foot on that field. Or his house. He kept playing with model cars and dead crows. 

Then it happened. Just off the interstate. One car tried to shift lanes but didn’t see the vehicle speeding into the blindspot. It was on a congested lane that squeezed cars onto a bridge. Six cars destroyed. No fatalities.

The crashes kept getting worse. People suffered some bruising, but most of the time they were protected. We found them in the wreckage, or on the side of the road. Unscathed. Crows rested peacefully on their bodies.

“Rob, what did you do?” I asked him. 

“The next crash will send a car flying into the air. No collision. It will just lift.”

 It wouldn't be the normal tragic experience. It was more like the wind blew a car 50 feet into the air. No one was harmed. But crows. Always one. They appeared in the sky and rested on the emergency vehicles. They rode along to the hospital, then back to the garage. 

When the crows saw Rob, they flocked to him. So next time I saw him on Social Media, I asked to see his project once again. 

He didn't want to at first, so I told that I saw the crows and believed him. 

He showed me everything. The maps, the computer simulator, stacks of statistics. Diagrams so detailed with legends, arrows, labeled connections, final nodes.

I didn't look at them.

"Bullshit. There’s too many variables. How can you be certain?" 

Then he showed me. A model car and a dead crow. He wrote names on a leaf, then buried them all together in the cornfield. He made a short prayer. But not to any God I knew. 

“A semi will run a big truck coming in from Texas off the road and into the river.”

The next day I got called to an accident. It was where he told me it would be. It was the same model of car as the one he buried. We found the driver in the water and retrieved her. The semi driver was alright too. Just more crows. 

I saw Rob standing on a post overlooking the incident. Crows followed him home. I called him that night. He ignored me. I called his wife, she gave the phone to him. 

I skipped to the point.

“Why are you doing this?” 

“I’m making predictions.”

“No, Rob. Whatever you’re doing is CAUSING the accidents.”

Click. Rob hung up.

I screamed at the dial tone for answers.

Multiple crows followed me home that day. 

Scarecrow

Rob woke up. The smell of must blew in from the window. The corn discharged a bitter aroma. It made his mouth water. 

Up in the morning. Routine. Dress, walk the land, check the water lines, the traps, and the pits that he dug. He smoked a cigarette and watched the animals trapped within. He jumped down with a thick wool glove. The animal scratched and bit his face but with a strong thrust he tossed the animals back into the woods. 

Rob stamped into the house. Doors blown open. Windows shattered. A crow on the sill. 

 He smelled no coffee. He didn't hear anyone in the kitchen. The school bus would arrive at any minute.

 Rob checked in the girl's bedroom. One girl stood frozen with the brush in her hair. The other was in the bathroom, one sock on, a toothbrush in her mouth. Mid spit. 

His wife hung there almost suspended over the bed with sheets in her hands.

KAW! A crow shrieked from the compost bin. 

Rob looked at the crops from the broken window. The rattle of thousands of crows lingered from outside. Hefty breasted cawing filled the air along with dander. They picked at carcusses on the ground and tore the corn to pieces. 

Rob called for help but the phone kept cutting out. The signal it picked up was the hoarse coo of a crow. He fired a gun but it didn't scare them. Nor did the distant thunder. He had this problem before. He turned on a high frequency buzzer. A few flew away but most remained circling the sky, landing in other openings, forming circles around a food source. 

The old fashioned way. He built a cross, then hung an old flannel stuff with grass over it. He put a Halloween mask on its shoulders and old jeans on its hips. He strapped its limbs to the cross. 

Rob walked out into the mud with it over his shoulder. The sweat from the corn put a bitter taste in his mouth. Loose ears sliced his cheeks. The crowds had eaten entire pathways  and uncovered bones beneath the soil. 

Rob had seen worse on the farm. Memories came back of the foxes. How they dug under the chicken coop. He heard the animals bleating in the wind.

He placed the scarecrow on a rise in the earth. Turned it so the Halloween mask faced the crows. Hammered it down. Watched from the porch. The crows avoided the scarecrow. He sat there and drank an entire box of wine. He sat there until it got chilly. Then he put on his sweater. He sat there, and for the first time in days he fell asleep. 

In the morning, the crows had vacated that entire end of the field. So he built a second one and placed it on the other side of the field. The crows lifted into the sky and flew over the trees. The sky turned white. The stormclouds blew away. 

Rob checked on his family. They changed positions. They now lay on the floor, their heads tilted against hard surfaces, or pressed into tight angles. Rob dragged them to their beds. He could hear faint voices from the depth of their throats. He apologized over and over. Black shadows scratched the glass. 

In the morning he saw them in bed. Clothed, but withered away. Dried up to corn husks. A cross around their necks. Rob ran to the bathroom, vomited, then swallowed every pill he had left. And he heard the caws. Not in a string of noise. All at once. Pause. Caw. Pause. Caw.

 Rob saw them on the porch swing. On the head of a cow. On great grandmother's tombstone. They all faced his home. He didn't see the scarecrows now. Only his crosses and crows perched on top of them. The scarecrows were upside down and dismembered. The masks hung from the heads of happy goats. Pieces of their bodies led to a parting in the field.

In the middle of the field was something that was not there before. Two dark wings like shields against the white of the sky. They rose over the blonde of the corn. 

Rob grabbed a baton and stepped out barefooted. The crows stepped aside. The corn stalks leaned over for him. He found pieces of the scarecrows spaced out in a trail. He held a cross in his hands. But when he came under the shadow of the wings it melted in his palm. 

Its wings blocked the light.  It's snarl absorbed the warmth from the wind. The dirt it sat on turned to charcoal. Its fist balled up on the ground emitted a low pounding sound. Its wings outstretched like the blades of a scythe. 

The white of the sky turned to a black dot as the shadows of the demon king rose over his head. 

Rob was an ant. Then he was a dot in the cornfield. Then he was a speck from the clouds. Like lighting, a leaden blur, with ferocious grace that created a rainbow, the dot expanded its shadow over the county and fell over Rob.

The next day the field caught fire. The fire spread across the county and covered the villages in smoke so thick that it suffocated the chickens.

Gargoyle 

Last time I noticed it. Rob's funeral.

The paramedics whispered amongst each other about how Rob drank and then strangled his family after mixing medication with beer. 

The fire fighters thought it was fumes he breathed in during a chemical fire at the factory.

The people he had been friends with outside of his job murmured about a time when a baseball hit him hard in the head.

I tried to talk quietly about it with one other person.. It all started with this crow… and a toy car. They walked away from me.

 No one believed what had happened. How could they? We all wanted an explanation. A rational one. Then…

The wind shifted. Red lights appeared from the hazy fields. The priest stopped his eulogy to look. Others covered their eyes and told their children that it wasn’t real even when it was looking at them. But one by one the heads turned. A pair of eyes squinted. Some people  laughed. One person froze. The distant family refused to look. Everyone saw it.  

It was there against the last row of cornstalks. Tall and hushed. Its wings opened to catch the air. 

No one said a thing. We all stared, a dread tying us together, that maybe if we looked away we’d see it someplace else. One person finally looked away.

Out on the highway, something hit hard enough that we all heard it.