Nano Day 6 - No title as of yet...

[joegoda]

For Capi and the other readers



I found a place not far away from the hotel where I could get something to eat. Some little quick stop called Konvenience Korner that was open twenty-four hours. The glaring yellow, red and green sign that proclaimed the store's name was nearly blinding me, it was so bright. Angelina was silent, thank God. I don't know if I could take a nattering woman at this point. I was wasted, I was drained beyond what I really wanted to ever, every experience, I was cranky and I was old.

I hadn't done something that incredibly stupid for a very long time. What the hell was I thinking? Okay, so it helped a bit, it helped Angelina. She knew that someone, probably her Daniel, was on the way. She also knew that someone else, probably this Matthew person was with him and hurt pretty badly. I gave her points for not asking all the thousand of questions she wanted to ask, regardless of the worry she wore like a shroud. I wished she would have stayed in the hotel room, but I can't say I blame her. Strange things were about.

When I go kiting about on the soular winds, I don't realize, I don't even remember what sort of toll this takes on my physically. I don't remember that I come back totally done in, hungry as a bear waking in the spring and not a very nice guy at all. It's only when I get back to this corporeal plane do I suddenly remember all these physical things. You know what? It sucks. Big time.

It doesn't leave you right away, either. All the way there, I kept getting flashes of what was beyond. I kept hearing the colors calling me back, to come and join them, to come and just be. It's an addiction, and it's a deadly one. More deadly than my cigarettes, let me tell you.

Those folks that brag about doing astral projection? I'd like to see them when they come back to their bodies. I'd like to sit at a pub and compare notes and see how many of them do it on a regular basis. Not many, I'll bet.

Here's the thing. I know that our spiritual-selves are a part of us. I know that there are some of us human beings that have the ability to tap into them and ride the winds, heal the sick and even, if you believe it, talk to those that have passed on. It's not a natural thing for us, though. We have bodies for a reason. Otherwise we would have been born without them and not had to deal with the slings and arrows of the flesh. A price is paid, the price is pain, and it's alway gonna be there. There's always a price.

I stood outside the store, leaning on the van, eating a burrito something or other that tasted like it had been dipped in brine. The coffee wasn't half bad, and it went well with the Coke I was drinking. Yes, it's an odd combination, coffee and coke, and fizzes like you wouldn't believe. At that point, I wasn't going for fashion or style or even good taste. I was going for sugar and carbohydrates and caffeine. Doing stupid things burn up a lot of energy.

Angelina sat quietly in the van, while I stayed outside, letting the night air blow away my tension. I was still beat, but not quite as bad as I was a few minutes ago. Fuel for the body, fuel for the soul, and I've always been a quick healer. Every so often she would look over at me, I could feel her eyes on my shoulders as I just leaned and looked and waited for some normalcy to come back.

A loud noise pulled my attention from looking into the nothing. Some young punks were out and about in their beat up old ford, which needed a muffler. Or it had one, the sort that is loud enough it makes you grab for something to beat it to death and put it out of it's misery. I think they called them glass packs when I was a kid. If you ask me, they didn't pack enough glass in 'em.

The two jumped out of the car, which they left still running and dashed inside. They didn't stay long, though. They turned around and came back, walked over to the van on Angelina's side and started talking to her. This was not going well.

At first they were fairly quiet, and I only heard one or two obscenities, something fairly mild, common and not worth repeating. Angelina got points for ignoring them. I didn't get any points because I can't ignore anything for very long. Especially when the things start banging on my van, and shouting words that would have made my mother blush. And my mother taught me things you wouldn't believe. Mean alcoholics are the ones that Satan, if there is such a being, sends up here to show us what Hell is like. A preview, if you will.

When the pounding started, I had just finished my vinegar burrito, and my eyes had just quit seeing enough of blue and red and flashy sparks that I felt I could probably handle humans again. Still, as I moved around the van, the waves of energy that encompasses all living things was as visible as waves against the shore of Skiatook lake. They eddy, they ripple as we move though them, you see. We push them ahead of us, we push them around us, well... you get the picture. These things are called auras by some. I dunno. I just know that I can see them when I come back from over there.

"Hey!" I shouted, and it made my ears ring, not because I was that loud, but because I wasn't ready to start talking yet.

The two punks, both with more metal in their faces than anyone would hire, quit pounding on the van and turned to look at me. I don't remember exactly what they looked like. They were just ugly, which is what anyone looks like when they don't have control of themselves.

"What do you want, old man?" one of them asked. The tone basically told me that he was prepared to wipe me off his shoes, after he had planted them on my face.

"I want you to leave the girl alone," I told him. "She's with me and I don't really like you beating on my van."

"This piece of shit is your van?" said the other one. "I was thinking that it looked like the perfect ride to me. Why don't you give it to us, and we'll leave you and the girl alone." He looked at his buddy and winked. "Won't we, Slick?"

Slick smiled broadly, his teeth showing gray in the dim light. "Yeah, old man. We've always wanted a van to party in. Just give it to us and we'll just go away." He nodded towards the van. "Cept we want the girl, too. Mickey and me need to relax tonight."

The clerk inside the Konvenience Korner came out just then. "You guys want me to call the cops? Getoutta here!"

"Do that," Slick said. "We know where you live and where your little girl lives too." He spit on the ground. "Remember that, Charlie." The way he said the clerks name, stretching it out, reminded me of every movie I ever saw that had teenage punks in it. It was drawn out and mean and threatening. I'd had enough.

"No, I don't think that's gonna be necessary, Charlie," I told the clerk. "The boys and I were just having a little chat. Go back inside and clean the freezer or something."

"You sure?" Charlie asked.

"Sure," I said, smiling, "I have everything under control." I wasn't liking where my mind was taking me, but really there wasn't much I could do. Like I said, people get ugly when they lose control.

"Angelina, lock the door," I told her. Her face was drawn with concern. I could tell she thought I was crazy. She might have been right. "I'll be right back.

I walked directly at the punks, arms loose, calm, collected. When I got to them, I looked Slick, who seemed to be the leader, directly into his smiling, metal laden face.

"Listen, you little snot head," I spoke quietly. I know Angelina couldn't hear a word I was saying, and I intended it to be that way. "I was wiping my butt with creeps like you before you were ever a tiny little wriggle in your daddy's pecker. I am giving you one chance to get in that crud mobile you drove up here and go home. Just one. And don't push that one, either. I shit you not, I have had the sort of day that you only nightmare over."

Slick was obviously used to being the big dog. He was not used to being talked to like he was a three year old who had just been caught with a dirty diaper. He didn't like it, no sirree. Not one bit.

I stood there, watching the black of his anger build around him. Slick's face had taken on the bloated look of an over-ripe and very unhappy melon. His mouth worked open and closed and his eyes shone with blood. This was not a happy man, or boy, or turd. Whatever.

His bud, Mickey had sneaked behind me. He didn't exactly sneak, since the stink of his moronity and the feel of his stupidity followed him. I knew exactly where he was, and I knew exactly what he was doing.

Their plan, for what it was worth, was this. Mickey would kneel down, Slick would push me over, and the two of them would kick the crap out of me. That's it. That was their plan. Elegant in its simplicity.

After they had beat me to death, they would probably rob me, take the van, and try to rape and then murder Angelina. They would probably dump her body, and maybe mine, somewhere down the road in some mountain ravine where the coyotes and mountain lions would have lunch.

Then again, they didn't know that I was one seriously tired and pissed off Mister Hyde who knows more than he looks like he knows. When I get really angry, my personality changes. Loss of control in me equals one really. Ugly. Mister. Hyde.

Slick lunged at me, not quite as clumsy as he could have. The boy had some talent. He could have been a wrestler or a football player if he had stayed in school. He actually put his weight on the proper foot and reached out to shove me. He was well balanced and had apparently done this enough that it had become second nature. He didn't even yell or scream. Most guys, when they try to do something like this, do a power yell, to try to intimidate who ever they are doing it to. Not Slick. He just lunged.

There is a nerve bundle near the solar plexus that will, if the proper pressure is applied in just the correct way, drop anyone from the biggest monkey to the smallest creep. A little and they'll be on the ground gasping for air, while their diaphragm tries to recover from its uncontrollable spasming. A little bit more, and they'll find their diaphragm is paralyzed for a couple of minutes, usually causing them to get all panicky and they tend to pass out from lack of air. If they didn't pass out, they would find that their arms and legs didn't work properly. They would work, but just kind of... flop around. A little bit more and the arms and legs stop working for a pretty long time. Of course the diaphragm is not working, so the person can't breathe, so unless they get help pretty quick, two or three minutes, they tend to die. With the right amount of pressure, you can drop someone and they are dead before hitting the ground.

Slick got door number two. Straight down, Like a sack of potatoes, he went. I turned back to find Mickey on his hands and knees right behind me, eyes wide at seeing his buddy on the ground, twitching.

"You better help him, Mick," I said. The sight of Slick's arms flopping around like that and the bit of foam that was starting to bubble at the corner of his mouth as pretty impressive. Mickey looked up at me, eyes still wide and the smell of fear, which is a rather piss colored gold, by the way, started to rise from him.

"Scat, you miserable crud!" I yelled at him. "Get your friend and get the hell out of here!"

Mickey crab walked over to Slick and picked him up as best as he could. Slick's arms and legs were twitching like an epileptic, and Mickey had quite a struggle as he pulled Slick around to the passenger side. Mickey opened the door and shoved him in. He then crawled over his buddy, to keep away from me, I guess, put the crappy car in reverse and pulled out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

I pulled my tired butt around to the driver's side and crawled into the van. Angelina sat way over on her side, looking at me. "What did you do?" she asked?

"Stupid stuff, Angelina." I put the key in the ignition and started the van. "I did stupid stuff."

See, when you do something that large, and by large I mean with that much raw emotion, you attract attention and there was already attention on her. Besides the three that I knew about, Daniel, and the two others, there were a whole bunch of speghetti strands that reached out to her whirly-gig. A few were not very friendly, showing the sickly greenish yellow of crazy people, shot through with the strains of black that means exactly what you think they mean. There weren't very many, maybe ten in all, but they were there. I just didn't tell her about them, because she knew that she was being looked for anyway.

Since I was the one flying the soul kite, the attention suddenly became focused on me as well. Whoever was looking for her, now knew she wasn't alone. Oh, they didn't know who I was and they didn't know where we were, but they knew that Angelina was traveling with someone. It was a good bet they even knew what direction and what road we were taking, since some of the bad guys had already found Daniel and Matthew. Since we weren't in Las Vega, we must be somewhere else, right? There were only a few major roads to Oregon that also led to Las Vegas. It was a safe bet that someone not very nice was heading our direction, probably right behind, or even in front of Daniel and company.

If they had been sniffing us out, if they were bloodhounds as well as bad guys, then my little show of force had become a road flare they could see for miles around. Like knowing your loved one is hurt from thousands of miles away, strong emotion can also be seen by those who know how to look. And that, children, is why losing control is a bad thing. Repeat after me. Losing control is a bad thing.

I backed out of the Konvenience Korner's parking lot, nearly asleep. I was lucky I didn't back into anything or hit a light pole or something. The trip back to the hotel was one of the longest, most agonizing trips I'd ever taken, and it was only two miles away. If I had not had Angelina in the van, I would have just pulled over and let sleep take me. I had to get her safe, though. Bad guys can't find you if they don't know where to look, and doubling back on your trail is rarely a bad thing.

Angelina helped me into the room. It was two in the morning and I was walking wounded. I don't know where she got the energy. She was as lovely as when I first met her. No, she wasn't lovely. She was a child in my protection, which I accepted the moment I stupidly told her to get in the van. She was just the child of someone trying to get home.

"Let me sleep," I mumbled, "until seven." I didn't hear what she had to say. My brain had shut down and I crashed.

And I dreamed.

I was running in this dream, and the sounds of hounds baying in the background told me that I was being chased. I had no idea who was chasing me, or why. I didn't recognize the terrain I was in, but for some reason, I knew I was near Miami, Oklahoma.

Miami is a small town, named after tribe of Native Americans who have their tribal seat there. Or at least they used to. It was so long ago that I was there, they could have moved it. I liked Miami, up in the Northeastern corner of the state. It was sleepy and it was quiet and only twenty miles from the worlds most polluted super fund site. Rumor has it that there is a flooded city underneath Miami, complete with a theater and restaurants and stores. It was supposedly built to accommodate the zinc miners in the area. It was the zinc mines and their chaff that created the super fund site of the town of Pitcher, Oklahoma, now mostly a ghost town. Apparently, zinc poisoning is bad stuff, and the government decided that Pitcher, Oklahoma, which supplied most of the weapons grade zinc during our first world wars, needed to be purged.

I was running in this dream, away from Miami, though tall wheat fields and over hills. The baying of the hounds was very far away. I knew I had a good head start on them, and I knew that if I could just find a place to hide for the night, I would be fine in the morning.

I crested one green hill and saw a farm house. It was a typical two story farm house, the same that you see in every single movie about a farm. There was a tractor, there was a barn, there were crops. It was a farm house.

I ran down the hill and up the short steps to the front door. I knocked sharply and the door was opened by the man of the house. He was tall, farmer looking and wearing overalls. I've never known the difference between coveralls and overalls. I just know that farmers wear overalls.

He opened the door wide and ushered me in. "Come in, son," he said, "We've been expecting you."

The farmer and his farmer wife and his two little farmer children, one boy and one girl, watched me as I ate a very quick meal. It was good, though I can't remember what it was. I just know it had gravy.

His wife looked very nervous, but the farmer seemed very sure of himself. They apparently knew who I was and what I was doing and where I was going. The important thing to me is that they were helping me. It never occurred to me, as it seems to be the way of dreams, to ask who they were and why they were doing what they were doing.

They hid me way up in their attic, above the second story. They covered me with quilts until I was a snug as I could possibly be. They told me to be quiet and once the trouble had passed they would be up to get me. Then they left me and went back down stairs.

In my dream, I slept. I have always found this odd. In my dreams, I can sleep, I can play, I can fly, and I can even die. I've died more times in dreams than I can count. The oddest thing to me, though, is that in my dreams, I can sleep. I wonder what I dream when I go to sleep in my dreams?

I woke, in my dream, to the sun streaming through the attic window. It was a bright, beautiful day, and the musty quilty smell was just wonderful enough to remind me of my grandmother's bed.

I got up, found the trap door that led down to the rest of the house and carefully found my way to the first floor.

The house was quiet, which is not what a farm house is in the morning. In the morning, a farm house is full of noise, especially if there are young children. Momma is always cooking or cleaning or doing dishes or washing clothes. Children are always laughing or running or fighting or doing chores. Papa is usually out on the tractor doing something, or tinkering fixing whatever broke so it can work just a little bit longer until they can afford to by a decent replacement part.

But this house was quiet. Quiet as sin in a church. Quiet as ... well, it was just too damned quiet. I looked around the living room to see if there were any signs of a struggle. Everything was right where it should be. Nothing had been disturbed. No papers on the floor, not a book out of place, all the furniture was exactly where it had been when I walked in last night.

I found them in the kitchen. They were all dead. Momma and Papa had their throats slit, and I won't even describe what was done to the children. They had died rather than give me up. Why? Why? I never knew. I had no idea what there was about me that would cause a family to maintain their silence about my whereabouts, even while they were being tortured. I had no earthly clue.

In my dream, I just stood there, stunned, tears running down my cheeks, and sobs ripping from my chest. In my dreams, I can cry. And I did.

The dream shifted, as dreams do. I found myself standing in the middle of Kansas City, on the Kansas side. I was standing on Interstate 70, which was oddly deserted. There was no traffic of any kind. It was early morning, probably about six AM. Nearby, there were some store fronts, and there were a few people milling around.

A group of four, a mix of men and women, came over to me. They seemed to know me, because they were smiling. Dreams are funny that way.

"You need to go West," A tall man said. "You need to go to the Mountain People." He said it with the capital letters, and he said it as if I should know who these people are. "You need to find them. They'll tell you what to do."

I looked at them, and I was confused. I still had no idea who I was to them, and what I was supposed to be. I just stood there.

"You need to run, now, Chester," one of the woman, a short woman with white hair said. A sound like an army tank was coming from somewhere. "You need to go to Oregon and find the Mountain People. They will tell you what to do."

A taller woman, slender and with dark eyes and short hair, touched my arm. Earnestly, she said, "Don't let them catch you. They don't know what you can do, but they want it anyway. You need to run, now."

Around the corner of a building, I saw a massive tank appear, which would explain why I had heard one. There was a man wearing a shiny helmet sitting on the tank and when he turned in my direction, so did the tank.

"You need to run, now." All four of the group said this at the same time. They turned and faced the tank. The last of the group, a short man with a beard, turned his face to me and yelled, "Now! Run now!" His face was the same face I wear.

I started running up Interstate 70. The tank ran right over the group of people. They never made a sound as I felt the vibrations of the tank as it ran over them.

Angelina was shaking me gently awake. "Chester? It is seven in the morning. You said to wake you."

I grogged myself awake, but just barely. My cheeks were wet.

"You were crying," she said, looking concerned. "You didn't say anything, you didn't talk or anything. You just started crying." Bless her heart, she held out a cup of hot, hot coffee for me.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I do that all the time."

I got up and got dressed. Then I stopped. "Did you undress me?" I asked.

"You looked so uncomfortable," she said. "I knew you would sleep better if you were naked."

She didn't even look embarrassed. I guess that was a good thing, because I most certainly was. I'm not a kid anymore, and even though I don't have the self loathing that some people do for their middle aged bodies, I know what I look like.

"Uh. Thanks, I guess." I tied my shoes and stood up. "And thanks for the coffee."

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"As good as I'm gonna be," I replied. I felt like a limp dishrag. "Did you sleep at all?"

"A little," she said. Ah, the power of youth. I remember getting two hours sleep, then getting up and doing it all over again. She had that worried look on her face.

"I'm fine," I said, "Really."

"It's not you, Chester," she said. "I'm worried about Daniel and Matthew. You said last night that one of them was hurt badly."

One of the tricks I can do that doesn't use hardly any energy is to cast a net. To cast a net, you just toss your consciousness out and see where it goes. You can direct it like you would throwing a fishing net, but there's not guarantee you'll find anything. Since it's not concentrated, since you don't have to go into any sort of meditation, it costs practically nothing but time.

I cast my net out to see if I could sniff out a Daniel and a Matthew. It took a minute, but I caught just the barest whiff of them, somewhere up North of us. Since I know the range of my net, I figure they were probably about fifty miles or so ahead of us. Daniel, if he was the bright one sniffed much stronger. The other, Matthew, was still alive, and from how he felt, was on the mend, though not a hundred percent yet.

"They're fine, Angelina. About fifty miles ahead of us, I reckon. If Matthew is the one that's hurt, he's still hurt, but he's healing. Daniel must have some pretty good mojo, because last night Matthew didn't look so good."

The look of relief on her face was like cold water in the desert. She must have been terribly worried, more so than she let on.

"Who is this Daniel, anyway?" I asked.

"Daniel is my brother, Chester." She started gathering the bags. "He was sent by my parents to meet me in Las Vegas. He was supposed to take me the rest of the way to Oregon."

She went into the bathroom and gathered up the little soaps that hotels put out. She tucked these into her bag, and seeing me watching her, smiled, shrugged and said, "but they're so cute and useful." It reminded me of how much a child she actually was, that smile. It was so pure, and so innocent. Of course, I don't trust pure and innocent in an adult, but I let that lie where it was. She was a child.

I picked up my own bag, my camera, and my ever present coffee cup. "It's time we were leaving, Angelina. You need to get to Oregon for whatever it is, so we can save the world."

I dropped the key on the dresser, turned to give the room one last inspection. I usually leave the housekeeping staff a five dollar tip under the pillow. I slid the bill just under the pillow so it could be found. From the looks of the bed, whoever it was that cleaned was going to earn their money. I sweat when I get scared. I sweat a lot.

"You are a good man, mister Chester," Angelina said, following me out the door. "You are a lot like my brother."

"Oh?" I said, tossing my bag into the van.

"Yes," she said. "He's a very powerful wizard too."

"I am not a wizard, Angelina." I started the van, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed up I-25. "I'm just a grumpy fifty something guy that can't quit doing stupid things."

Angelina just smiled, nodded and said, "Ah yes. Just so."

At least the coffee was good.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

*warm smile*

This story is wonderful, my friend. Keep it coming.

And fifty isn't old. So there.

(((( fierce hugs ))))

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Awww.. thanks, Capi. In contemplation, there are some small details I want to add when I go back for the re-write... and this one will have a re-write. I want to add more to Angelina's reactions to things, because I think she needs it. I need to define her character a bit more. I now have a place where the story is headed, I got an inkling of the end, so I need to direct her more towards the logical character development that she'll have to have to be able to do what she needs to do. Besides, she's way to quiet.

Fifty isn't old, but there are times when I feel so much more than fifty. It happens. I get odd aches and pains and things that happen that I have no explanation for except that I'm getting older. Fifty isnn't old, but sometimes there is most assuredly a bit of treadwear that shows through.

[capi.livejournal.com]

I understand that you will wanna fill things out later. This *is* rough, after all. That's fine. The core is good, tho. Really.

And as for feeling much more than fifty..... *LOL* I started feeling 95 when i was *almost* 40, but hey. I'm doing better now, eh? *grin* I know all about advancing age and the garbage that comes with. You'll be fine, dearlin'. And yes, sometimes the treadwear will show, but... i like to think of it as a Purple Heart badge of honor. We've EARNED it. *smile*

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Attack of the Giant Cooties!