MarkMiller

This was one of my favorite threads on the other board. Many of those that had frequented it are not here yet so I will start it in hopes that some will find there way to it!

Heretic

1/2

The following is inspired solely by a dream
The following never passed and never will have been
However because it happened and has yet to ensue
We have been spared horrors we never knew
Worse and beyond our apocalyptic faiths would dare
Worse by far than your most disturbing nightmare


Only four years old he didn’t cry at knowing he parents would drop him off and go home without him. Mature beyond his age, Aziz still expression regular four-year-old attributes. Holding hands with his mother and father among them, he kept looking up at them both as they traded descending smiles on him. The swerving curving cement walkways twisted and swooped through a beautiful park seeded with self regulating length grass, a lawn genetically engineered to keep a desired length as chemically programmed by the computerized sprinkler system.

"So Aziz," his daddy tossed out of the blue a question he had been anticipating with a mental countdown of seconds. "When do we see you again?"

"December fifteenth!" he chirped out youthful exuberance overlaying uncanny knowledge of the future.

"And when do we come back to the monastery?" his mommy quizzed.

"January seventh!"

"So when does the class year end?" Daddy further.

Opening his mouth reflexively, for answers had always come to him so, Aziz said nothing and closed his jaw with a click of teeth and creased brow. He again parted small lips. "I dunno."

His parents both stopped and searched his cherubic face behind tiny fingers picking at a protruding lower lip. "Am I bad?"

Daddy knelt quickly down to his eye level taking Aziz’s shoulders in his titanical hands. His face hinted at wanting to say more but, warmly, thought better of it. "No, of course not. You’re the bestest of good little boys. C’mon!"

"Ah! Aziz!" came from behind his daddy. "You’re expected."

Of course so, Aziz knew. The Head Master carried the same gift of Skipping. The ability to mentally zip to and fro in time. The very reason Aziz started school so early. Except this school graduated students after but a single year or not at all. Sure normal education followed, but here they taught something else well beyond the knowing of normal people.

A private school, it nonetheless carried the sanction of virtually all governments and international agencies. For here trained a bastion against threats none in past centuries fathomed possible and still struggled to scientifically confirm. For after traveling between stars long since became possible within one’s lifetime, and indeed over the weekend, there awaited no threats to humanity. No, dangers emanated from outside the conceivable universe and linear time.

Alternate realities of time did exist. However, as with the space between worlds and solar systems most realities merely contained void. Quantum variables therein consisted of different values, ergo left no matter, to say nothing of life possible in their physically infinite confines. The so-called Nether Space of hyper dimensional existence.

And where realities just as bespeckled with matter and energy as this one did manifest didn’t with quite the same principles. And still most held no life, nor had any been shown to produce the sort of variety in periodic elements. Yet one distant brane in the multiverse had been found with similar equivalents to known parameters of reality. Here there be dragons.

Or rather, creatures whose best description as wormy maggots. Larval phases to adult organisms as yet to be catalogued by science. For that’s how vigilant the monks proved to be. First appearing decades past, their sudden existence spurred accelerated research into physical sciences and mathematical models well beyond the centuries defunct String Theory. Befuddling the best minds in multiversal physics and xenobiology, they did at least discovery the organisms depended on cross-dimensional parasitism as a regular part of their life cycle.

From there a hitherto unknown order of monks took over.

Head Master Ortez among them, he implied Aziz’s own future as counted among them. "You all ready to get started?"

"Yep!" Aziz shouted, neither he nor the Head Master requiring introduction.

Both also knew where Aziz needed to go, as he raced off with his small bright colored backpack swinging from side to side. Head Master Ortez turned away, but stopped before prompted to by Aziz’s mother.

"Please, take good care of him for us."

Ortez raise a sagely finger. "It’s he who will take care of you. Trust in that."

Pupils roomed in pairs; Aziz with Joey, whom he knew all along would his other half in the school’s buddy system. All the children took well to sitting still for medication practice uncharacteristically so for their age. What turned studiously grueling and conceptually taxing became instruction on how to break with fixedly linear Skipping.

Traversing brane universes couldn’t yet be done physically. For acting as barriers lay branes with physical paradigms so different they reacted in more hostilely uninhabitable ways to known matter and energy than interstellar space acted on human beings unprotected by pressure suits. Though a properly trained mind could venture where angels literally feared to tread.

Aziz and Joey didn’t know if Skipping time was allowed while in class. No one bothered to explain. Though he found something blocking him from passing into the second semester. Lessons seemingly lasting many years passed in winks of the pupil’s whims when coupled to their innate Skipping talents. And yet they still bore the experiences of having trudged through schoolwork.

After jumping ahead to his limits, the morning of the first day in Spring Semester, Aziz Skipped back to September. He and Joey sat out on the park grass with their picture books sprawled about them. Joey lay on his stomach with feet waving sideways behind him. Both kids set their focus on simple sentences and accompanying drawings belaying complexities beyond measure.

Reading aloud, they spoke in unison, turning a page between complete thoughts. "With but a hop, skip and a jump we do not get the hurting lump. When my tummy squirms it warns of the naughty worms. If I see the same boy twice both are dead as field mice."

On Skipping to October Aziz learned how to read a person’s Number. Hyper dimensionally speaking each person existed only once. In a multiverse of infinite possibilities, that’s how many variables led to the development of any single organism throughout the known reality.

But when the extra-brane parasites infected a host they and it both multiplied instantly. Infection, of course, never required physical contact, for cross dimensional touch technically couldn’t happen anyway. The organisms used unfortunate hosts to momentarily alter their own matter to temporarily assimilate to this universe’s periodic table of elements.

This allowed tissue growth as biologically capable within Earth’s life and indeed according to principles of life throughout the universe. And once achieved the parasite’s body immediately shifted its matter onto a form of mass crudely referred to as Strange Matter. Each creature proved unique in that they individual derived matter entirely different from others amongst their- loosely defined as, species.

When they semi-burst through known reality and through the host’s body it remained just as painful as if ripped apart by more directly physical means. When that happened and a host died their Number became zero.

Another way a Number changed, Aziz’s teacher revealed, happened if he built Hop power. Skipping took place within the known time of this universe, but Hopping allowed travel between universes. Jumping wouldn’t be taught until the second semester.

So far Aziz learned how to boost his Number to four, the same as his age and typical for that many years. Joey still struggled to reach two, but Aziz helped where he could. He imagined as if someone’s Number hovered over their head inside a blue square off to side; sorta like in computer games he played sitting on his daddy’s lap.

Skipping to December showed Aziz his tutelage paid off, and Joey started showing real promise.

continued...

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

Heretic

2/2

And still neither could Skip to the second semester. They both lay awake in bed the last night before going home pondering why. Their grey pajamas turned iridescent blue in pale moonlight beaming through the one window Joey’s bed sat closest to.

"Maybe we’re not suppose to Skip to then, Aziz." Joey speculated.

"But someone should tell us. We might get in trouble if we do it without teacher saying we can."

"I guess so." Joey grumbled, not really let down as much as uncertain.

Normal kids Aziz’s age would’ve so missed their mommies and daddies so much that, if they could, they’d Skip back to the holiday break living it over and over. And though he did carry the sense for longing of four months gone Aziz also might’ve felt just an hour went by. Because oftentimes, it had just been an hour or even less. His teacher didn’t say, but seem to approval him and any other little boy or girl Skipping back to when their families lived together at any time they needed comfort or got scared.

When again reaching the first morning of Spring Semester in normal temporal progression Aziz Skipped right up to the limit. That of walking to class just outside the door. Only now that first day of class, and all after took place always elsewhere. In fact Teacher kept them walking around campus or sitting outside on the grass as she taught. For now physical location truly lost its meaning in effective edification.

They also had been issued a wickedly curved knife perfectly sized for their small hands. However, it couldn’t be drawn from its scabbard due to being fused together at the quantum level. A lock or sorts to which the children hadn’t yet learned the combination. So instead, they wore the inert weapons on their sides as meaningless additions to their apparel.

The first week of Spring Semester is when Aziz and the other kids learned to Jump past the dangerous branes normally obstructing scientific observation or permissible existence by normal matter. Only then did Teacher show them how to think their knifes free of its invisible bindings. Though she didn’t yet tell them what purpose the edged weapons served.

Though only a mental construct to equate hyper dimensional passage to something the children could grasp, Teacher made them imagine hallways. These corridors in fact existed as real components of safe trans-versal movement safe from the dimensional parasites. Put into place, both to ease garrisoning known reality from the invasive horrors they also doubled as proving grounds for students who would, from this point on, undergo testing of their knowledge.

Aziz and Joey hid out if dimensional "sight" in order to spy on one hall intersection. Normal kids unwittingly passed by in extra-dimensional terms. Students of the monastery couldn’t graduate without proving they could read Numbers consistently and accurately. Which Aziz and Joey did for a whole half hour to their boredom. Everyone they saw had a One, as they should. If ever a person had a Two or more meant the students had to call a grownup. Only not just any adult, but those versed in the same skills as they. In physical uni-dimensional terms the boys won’t go running for help, instead they’d Skip to the appropriate masters. Then the grownup would, again in a hyper dimensional sense, treat the unawares victim by preventing the infection in the first place. To date no one knew how to actually destroy the organisms in any sense, much less in a way that kept them from every existing in the first place.

All went well until Aziz spotted a kid from class walking around a normal kid. In the multiverse corridors they not quite brushed by each other, but after a pause there materialized two copies of the student. Always a bad thing to see it happen with normal people, Aziz hadn’t expected to witness this event with others having the same gifts as he.

Quickly he tooled his mind to read the boy’s number. Sure enough he found a Seventeen. But there popped up only two copies of the poor sap. The wormies must’ve been playing a trick!

Aziz just about Skipped to the temporally nearest grownup he knew, but stopped when he turned to see Joey’s Number ticking upwards slowly. Mouth agape a wide eyed Aziz pointed at nothing over Joey’s head while he backed away in terror.

Again ready to Skip for help Aziz spotted a lump rapidly forming inside Joey’s stomach. Worms weren’t suppose to spring out so fast! Joey’s Number hit Twenty before long, and he doubled over in excruciating abdominal pain. "Owwy! I’m sick!"

In the very next second Aziz’s buddies cries turned to ear piercing screams. A handful of the unsightly horrors burst through Joey’s skin and edged out from under his pulled up shirt. In panic, Aziz slipped the knife out to push the horrid things back in, not wanting to touch them and hoping that Joey’s sickness would go away if Aziz couldn’t see the worms.

Visible skin as well as muscle and exposed entrails underneath began to shrivel to nonexistence as the monstrous creatures manifested from spacial nowhere. Something in the back of Aziz’s thoughts from his most distant adulthood recollected backwards in time. He suddenly know the organisms’ appearance as maggots came from concepts borrowed from this universe and also from preconceived notions of the people suffering the infection.

What else Aziz’s yet-to-have memories flashed to mind was that the knife wasn’t for the creatures, as they didn’t exist completely enough in normal space/time to be injured by it or even know it existed. Instead the blade had been meant to cut open people in dire emergencies.

So that’s exactly what Aziz did, much to his own surprise. From Joey’s sternum to his groin the knife split skin, sinew and muscle with the ease of a zipper. That as Joey’s lower body distorted into looking more like the worms afflicting him.

From behind the kid copies draw near, entering Aziz’s consciousness again. As Joey writhed in greater pain than physics allowed, Aziz grew more terrified still, backing away from the grizzly scenes occurring in normal space/time and extra dimensionally.

To get away became Aziz’s only desperate thought, and he started building Hop power to do it. Four. Then Fifteen. Fifty. Two Hundred. At least he hit One Thousand Eleven.

All the while Joey’s distorting stomach opened up still more all on its own as a mouth ready to vomit into this world what never should be, never can be, and yet would horribly he see. In the physical world Aziz didn’t yet see worms, but he knew they’d soon race out to again fade into nonbeing hardly leave a trace of their slimy residue when slithering across otherwise disciplined grass.

The copy-cat kids stepped around to either side, while Aziz held onto his Hop Number ready to burst. His tiny balled up fists shook with barely holding self control, as Aziz’s eyes squeezed shut and his downcast jaw clench. Hyper dimensionally he saw Joey suddenly turn serene half leaning up on his still human hands. Joey’s legs shrunk away and his body lengthened into a facsimile of the maggots eating away at his existence in this time. Though, blissful in his countenance, Joey turned to Aziz with a demeanor brought back from decades yet to pass, and now wouldn’t come.

"It’s okay now Aziz. You’re the Finger of Heaven. Leader of the Do-Over."

Just as the wormy things spilled out they in turn split wickedly down the middle and burst open their ethereal guts in electrical flashes not quite making it into real space/time. Aziz became aware that the arcs of a semi-visible lightning storm had been drawn to him from the most distant branes cutting across the whole of the multiverse. The dazzling show drew the attention of Head Master Ortez who quickly jerked around to see the simultaneous tragedy/triumph.

Daring to open his eyes again, Aziz saw nothing before him. Not only no worms, as expected for things intruding into a universe inhospitable to them, but no Joey. Neither existed, had ever lived, and never would. Ortez also realized and much more. The Monastery no longer served a purpose, for the very threat against all life in this universe had been banished to imagination only.

No further students needing to be taught the monastery closed down that year, and its practitioners the world over, in fact the universe beyond, all gave up their trade in an instant of realization. Hence forth Skipping, Hopping and Jumping become nothing beyond curiosities of theoretical science with no practical application.

As had always been the case....

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

Heretic

On this day I passed away. Car accident... I think. Who knows. Didn’t see it comin’. That’s how it is I suppose. I would’ve jotted it all down for that whole, I’m dead... thing.

Bad as that is imagine my chagrin things only got worse, or seem to. Not an atheist I didn’t join any religion. Well guess what. The ethereal judge decided that’s a fuckup as grave as murder. Yeah, this auditor of the living and the dead went through the books of my life, ran the numbers and found me coming up short. You can guess where things went from there.

Some of what I took hell to be proved correct. Not just hot, but FUCKING HOT and HOLY SHIT IT’s COLD all at once. But that’s just the start of misery. We’ve no reference point when the whole of your world is a flat wall with you the fly on it. That’s how things are here in hell. There’s no ground, but a wall. While we all stand on it as you would the ground you know down isn’t toward your feet. What passes for air freezes while the wall radiates searing heat.

Because we have no body we can’t injure past the point of feeling pain from either of these much as we might like to. So we in hell feel pain and nothing but pain, in all its horrific forms, at their most pure. To avoid the most direct heat of the wall. All of us just scream, or would were we able to give voice to suffering. See, even to scream is a luxury that helps release pain. And any contact with the wall, which no one can avoid, causes the worst of burning pain, yet any separation induces the worse sensation of freezing. Every fiber of our condemned beings is being forever stabbed at by an infinite number of pins or knives. The slightest sense of trying to move turns into a flaying flesh we no longer have. Lacking skin means having it peeled and shredded from us never stops.

The wall glows with heat, but we can’t use it to se by. Strangely I get the sense this is for the better. Unable to see who exactly’s around me, or worse, what horrors lurk about me, I can’t recoil from them. It strikes me my only choice is to get use to all the pain. Though, as I said, I don’t have feet, I tried shifting what passes for stance to rotate one torture for another. Stillness causes one agony and motion another. The swapping between made both all the more heinously acute.

Out of nowhere it struck me I can mentally focus on the opposite torments. Initially, a flare up of dichotomies jolts me back into the ground state of wanting to scream it all out. However, a sheer lack of options pushes me back into the trick. By now eons could’ve passed. No one knows for sure "down" here. Once it occurred to me to wonder I then notice an intense explosion of light pouring across at the wall. With it comes a musical hum or buzz or- who knows, but it’s wonderful. It’d always been there, but my excruciation had been so distracting I didn’t realize nor care. A conic of rays possessing more beauty than I can imagine or recall- or it just seemed so, compared to being trapped in hell for so long.

That’s when I, for the first time, try to reach out to another eternal sufferer. Bare in mind I don’t have hands, but there’s something equivalent to such, because they never stop hurting in all ways possible and impossible. So touching the other makes it momentary worse for me and them. It throws me off my game of nullifying the many tortures. I do it again, and set them to noticing this light. No sense of communication could connect us, so I didn’t attempt any. But something passed, as this other person’s desire to scream seemed to diminish. They and I both went about letting others know about the light.

We all also realize what monstrosities sit among us. They feel hell’s pains as we do, but came to love them. In hell dwells one who leads the rest. And when it realizes what we’re all looking and listening to it starts gathering together us fallen and fiends alike. It says what’s in that light should be held responsible for our infinite torture and miserable hopelessness. Hell’s tyrant terrifies me as nothing else in hell can, and given what we deal with here, that’s saying something. It uses that fear to intimidate me into joining its crusade against the singing light.

Better to cope with the hell I know that risk angering heaven’s judge still more.

I tell the dictator of perdition no. it rails at me causing my resolve to weaken. However reluctantly I agree to be counted among its minions. To either side of me marches foul creatures no natural world could let evolve. Turns out they’re more numerous than all us punished sinners many times over. We leave the wall behind by a mean I can’t yet describe. Throwing aside the trick against pain, I set my sights for the light/song. That’s when an intense throb of a deep booming voice rattles my ethereal form. "NOT YOU."

Halting where I am I look back at hell’s sheer vertical face in dread. The voice wants me to stay, but the temptation of leaving it behind tears at me. I move toward the light again, finding the admonishing beacon issue nothing further. Except...

Its one warning gnaws at me. Frightened as I am of the universal head of all that it evil, I get a sense it might not notice my absence. Quite full of itself, it surely is, leading hell’s hordes onward. Its lieutenant enforcers likewise are so stoke by thoughts of retribution they hardly care about anything else.

So I slow down and skirt sideways to slip between fellow conscripts. Of the normal souls, or once normal, I attempt to draw them back with me. Most tell me off or threatened to inform on me. B ut a few explain their equivalent sense of foreboding. Not really looking forward to consigning ourselves to the rest of eternal torment, we nonetheless go back to the infinite wall of pain. We exchange our techniques of coping, while witnessing the vengeful masses parade into a climactic battle. The musical chromatic beacon swallows them all into that other, obviously better realm we missed out on.

continued...

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

Heretic

2/2

We hear nor see nothing about what came of them. Who can say for how long? Did they win? Maybe they’re living it up in a conquered heaven. Except I would’ve thought the devilish ringleader might’ve come to flaunt its victory in our faces and punish us for doubting its prowess. Possibly they lost and were celestially obliterated. In the confusion the forces of heaven simply overlooked us leftovers. Forgotten refugees in everlasting desolation, debilitation and misery.

Then I’m struck by a peculiar thought. My tricks aren’t as hard to use to lesson the walls searing and the ambient freeze nor the biting, tearing, piercing inflictions. I point this out to others, who, many for the first time, also realize it’s not so bad. Still longer and the pains subside entirely. The wall illuminates all around us but no longer burns. We can see again. It’s been so long the brightness does hurt, but in a good way. All of us had forgotten what real sight had been.

In fact hell is so well lit the one light, from which we all fell, never to reach again, seems to dim, grow dark and become its antithesis. I think back to that compelling order to stay and mention it to others. Seems we all heard and felt it. Possibly those who went in also did, but ignored the decree. It might be that heaven’s legions knew everyone would lose.

We wait on then.

Of course it does no good to contemplate the fate of heaven, for none of us will get our chance to go. We blew that went opting to stay.

A twinge of hell comes again.

I remind myself of the acclimatization I achieved and it readily fades. Really, hell’s not all that bad once you get use to it. And of course the Pitt’s master is nowhere to be seen, so naturally no one’s there to kick us around. We sinners get to know each other. Talking out what lead us here we still don’t learn what it is we could’ve done better to avoid our ultimate fates. I doubted a religion. Doubted all of them, really. And how could I not? In the sacred books and holy buildings of congregation I saw the fingerprints of man throughout. Its clergy evoking suspicion, their traditions subject to editorial review and nothing from on high to police any of it. Not only did no one reliable bothered to tell us the rules. Indeed we hadn’t known the game was on. Only too late did it occur to anyone of having scored low and failing. Seems failure became a universal force.

One day- or whatever, something came out of the musical light, turned moaning dark. A magnificence the likes of which none had beheld in life or the afterlife. Vaguely, as if the memory were a Jurassic fossil, I reflected on the description of angels. Glistening feathery wings. Whatever they really used to fly the image works well enough. Its halo didn’t just flat over its head, instead served as its whole form. Descending to us on the formerly infernal wall it hadn’t come alone. More streamed through. An endless procession of sublime beings settling down as snowflakes. The nearest of these benevolent presences hovered before me. Merely gazing upon it brought on a coziness I dared no imagine feeling again. Positively giddy at the sensation I had to jar myself back to a confusing point whispering in my mind.

"What’s an angel doing here? In hell? What? Did they kick you guys out?" I dared ask.

No. Of course it didn’t actually speak, just as none of us do. The sense of communication we do have additionally didn’t emanate from the blessed one. Yet it conveyed knowledge despite it all. Seems there had indeed been a battle between ultimate dark and eternal light. At this moment I knew I beheld a foot soldier of the divine side. Heaven’s guardian. Only paradise fell under new management. Those cast out seized the higher domain for their own, and these marvelous custodians of salvation had left.

Did they lose? Had this destination been a condition of their surrender? Maybe the vile vigilantes of darkness thought turnabout was just rewards for their own ostracism.

No.

Righteousness had triumphed by setting a trap of sorts. Leaving heaven intact they simply walked away from the fight before a single blow could be struck. In fact prior to sighting the enemy they evacuated the celestial kingdom. What drew them here turned out to be due our making it a more pleasant domain. Hell’s henchmen strolled into their new domain unopposed.

Hence the snare, for the suffering of sinners remains eternal regardless where. Any rebellious conquest does nothing more than bring that judgement along for the ride. For hell has no boundaries and heaven no confines.

We take them with us wherever we go.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

Heretic

You need not know the date nor the year. Merely understand that, at our peak, we counted thirteen and three quarters billion. No hostile force alone could curtail our growth; not Islamicists, nor communists, fascists, capitalists, industrialists, tyrants, despots, monarchs or theocrats.

By themselves, that is.

Nearly fourteen billion human souls. And of those, some eighty five percent now actively took part in war. Most of us refused to call it such, but by our results will you measure us. Of the rest? Hmm, must be traitors, double agents, pacifists, cowards, secret societies of conspirators and quiet rulers manipulating all others from the shadows. Insert your label here, for what matters of them.

That's when birds stopped singing. Not just song birds. Crows wouldn't caw, eagles no longer gave shrieking cries. No. They refused to utter a single sound. Over the course of years, their young hatched without bright colors shining from their feathers. So too did butterflies cease to sparkle and flutter their wonders. Flowers withheld their blooms. Nature threw its palette away, deeming us unworthy of admiring its art. Those few so inclined to scientific discovery found no reason, when taking a break from killing. Their vocal cords suffered no injury nor abnormality. When birdsong played, they responded, but by putting as much distance as possible from the source.

No matter.

Wars unnamed raged on. Nations fell, coalitions collapsed, tribes tore at tribes, and towns decimated towns. Ants rubbed antennae in anticipation. Apes nodded their approval... after vomiting their disgust. What few marvels of technology barely functioned found use against "the enemy" be they so designed or not. An additional two more centuries passed. While few nuclear weapons came to fearsome life, most of the world averted their radiation bath. Yet deserts grew. We fought for food, water and barely habitable stretches of land, long deemed worthless by ancient sane minds. So many continued to die that victors grew suspicious by the absence of "the enemy."

Humanity gravitated back to where it all began, in Baghdad, all in search of those we knew would do us harm. Gangs of humanity, such as they were, lashed out at each other with weapons going generations without repair. For no one lived who knew how.

No matter. Just scrounge around. You'll find a replacement.

Women, always the victims of both sides, became the first to vanish from the Earth. Of scant hundreds of people left, accusers stood pointing and shouting, "You laid prostrate for the enemy's pleasure," and were expunged for all time. An ever shrinking world of men and boys resumed the Great Struggle Against - whomever. One final batch of testosterone victors surveyed their domain, what little they could, and then did what homo sapiens always did. They turned against their own once more. Vying for dominance, each shot, stabbed, slashed, bashed, and blew up their fellows. One stood alone when the gritty sand settled,a proud iron statue of man.

Forgetting his mortality, he railed against the seeming unfairness of age. Becoming frail and decrepit, longing for aid from doctors reduced to dust. His last breathe drowned out by gusting howls of the desert outside, shorn strips of rotting cloth composing his palace.

Rats feasted, flies dined, though no vulture would touch him, lest they be tainted by his decaying filth. Those last to heed nature's dinner bell fasted this day. Weeks of desiccation preceded years of slow flaking of indigestibles and decades of bone crumbling away. All in the ruins of Eden.

Only then did the birds dare sing.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

jdanton

A nanny goat of monstuous size
once lived upon a hill

Then one day there came along
a larger nanny still

Who held her head high in the air
and walked with dainty tread.

But was determined, sad to say,
to see the smaller nanny dead.

Perhaps it's best I not describe
what happened on that day

But long before the dust had cleared
the bigger goat had run away

For smaller nanny had a friend
Sir Billy Goat, by name

Who vowed upon his love for her
to put any goat to shame.


I wrote that back in, I believe, 7th grade.

I also wrote the book referenced in my sig. It's available on Amazon, where one can usually get free shipping for a $25 order, so if anyone is ordering anything from amazon, and my book puts you over the $25 for the free shipping, it kind of half pays for the book.

I think most people on this board would likely enjoy it.

__________________
Author: Memoirs of a Sleepless Mind, a book you CAN judge by its cover.

Heretic

Wow! Did my posting those stories kill this thread? I'm sorry.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

Teri B.

NO way! What I've read is GREAT, as usual. Gotta find some time to read it all. You always touch a nerve Heretic.

Heretic

Just that Mark didn't come bak to his own thread.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!