The God Mark…
Fellsmere Florida, also
known as Grant Fellsmere, is located up near Indian River Shores. Indian River Shores
got its name from…?... I don’t know?
The months after The 2010
Fellsmre Frog Festival, the atmosphere of the town was one of recovery. Too many
frog legs, too much beer, can leave the population of this historic town in
need of some rest.
I mean to tell you there is
nothing to put you in a diabetic coma for a few days like a bag of caramel
batter dipped fried frog legs eaten after you have already downed beers one and
two and ready for beers three, four, and five.
Within a certain location
just inside the town limits you can turn a corner and walk a few blocks where
you will then come across a historical marker placed near the parking lot of a
bar called The Fear Smear.
In The Fear Smear you won’t
find anyone eating any caramel batter dipped fried frog legs. In The Fear Smear
its Frog Leg Tacos or nothing, all year round. That’s some nice, good, heavy
drinking bar food.
The Frog Festival has
nothing to do with this opening fragment of a story but Green has a color taste for
those little legs. Though she is known for the color red because of her blood
red hair the face is her favorite colors are the many shades of green.
One of her favorite joys
since leaving her people behind, a ancient race beyond such concepts as
eating for pleasure, she has loved exploring the wide variety of foods someone
can find travelling within the many realities, worlds, and possibilities of
existence. Be them plant, frog leg, or liquid slug shake this lady likes to eat.
On her home world there
weren’t any eatable animals so she has especially found an appetite for those
things which use to be alive.
And yes she has sampled the
tang of human jerky and will tell you it tastes nothing like chicken.
In the future of a reality
called The Collected there use to be a human colony planet that a group of
asshole stand-up comedians came to call the PETA planet. They ended up being eaten
by a blood thirsty race called The Seatrees.
To make it clear it was the
PETA planet colony, they were eaten by the blood thirsty race The Seatrees, not
the asshole stand-up comedians, they just keep performing for fare and food
onboard interstellar vacation spaceships.
And that’s a long way for a
writer to go to take a shot at PETA wasn’t it.
I don’t even remember how I got
off on that tangent? Yep, I should be better than that.
Something else to work
on.
Something Green doesn’t need
to work on is making friends.
Segue, Nailed It!
She has friends all over existence. From The Wall
Bound to The Tin Universe she has friends and enjoys nothing more than sharing
a meal with a friend. A good meal and then a book discussion. That to her is
just as much of an adventure as playing blind bluff with a Caspery Fleet.
More than a few times Green
has taken Fellsmere Frog Legs to offworld friends to sample or re-taste if they
have already gotten the taste for them. These Frog Legs are kind of famous in
several star systems.
Go Fellsmere.
In more than one of
those star systems Green has come across businesses who insist on playing games
with the names of their home planet, star system, or town when the time came to
title their business establishments. She finds it rather lazy and boring.
So do I.
The Fear Smear is across the
street from Tallet Fresh Foods, which is owned by a little old man with one eye
and a Ginger Ale addiction, and a little down the street from a cool piece of
Native American art that just has to be seen.
Green is here not just to
eat a mess of frog legs but also to visit the site of the first meeting of The
Suffrage Movement. This isn’t her first time here in Fellsmere for a history
lesson. She was here twice before in 1915.
The first time was in
February of that year but her visit was not for any historical reason, though
it ended up that way, but she was in fact helping a friend locate a piece of off world technology which would have been dangerous for humanity to find during
that time of its historical development.
That little adventure
involved an Octopuses Garden, which against the words sung by Ringo Starr is
actually a chaos weapon. This kind of weapon is meant to be used to cause panic
and fear within a population as a preemptive terror strike. The Octopuses
Garden mixes the DNA of animal species in most unusual ways.
Oh, it also drives those
affected insane.
Green and a newly formed Canadian
group called Sugar Cookies, formed by her friend Dwight China, were able to
quickly stop the outbreak before it got really out of hand and got the weapon
out of the country before one of the U.S. based underground groups were able to
get a hold of it.
In the same month, during a
meeting at the Dixie Theater, a group of Fellsmere citizens accepted the
articles of incorporation by a large margin after the way the whole community
all fought off a threat.
The charter included a
unique set of notes that women would be granted full and equal privileges in
elections. Anyone who may have been against the bill didn’t keep a close eye on
things and it went through legislators eyes unnoticed.
The second time Green found
herself in Fellsmere for a bit of history fun and a bit of adventure was in
June of 1915 during a simple election of a common office when one Ms. Zena M.
Dreier cast a ballot in Fellsmere becoming the first woman south of the
Mason-Dixon Line to do so.
The town residents took much
pride in this woman’s right and though only a few neighboring areas followed
suit, what happen in Fellsmere is a very historic event in women’s march to
equal rights.
Green was in town this time
visiting a friend she meet during the Octopuses Garden escapade and got involved
in the drama of that June. Also it was the very first- The Fellsmre Frog
Festival and as stated before she loves her some frog legs.
For the historical buffs out
there, in 1919, a U.S. Constitutional amendment granted suffrage to women. History
will tell that Fellsmere was kicking large long before the Constitution or Bill
Of Rights or whatever old piece of paper some group of old white guys wrote up started
paying attention to the plights of its female citizens when it came to the
right to vote.
But on this a hot day in March of 2010 Green’s memories of past
travels are put to the side as her thirst is getting the better of her. The
Earth is one of the best places in the galaxy for drinks of leisure. In the far
future of The Interrupted Light an old saying will come to be well known- Humans,
They Sure Can Drink.
The outside of The Fear Smear looked like a roadside grocery store
with closed eyes and an open mouth. The side windows to the square building
were nailed shut but the double front doors…well, they were laying in the
gravel covered dirt parking lot.
Green walked into the bar to the sight of two busy pool tables, a
atmosphere of tasteful filth, and a full line of people at the bar waiting for
drinks and Frog Leg Tacos.
She didn’t know the significance or if it was true of most of
present day Fellsmere but everyone she’s encountered so far has been Mexican. Well,
saying Mexican is probably a bit racist, and she might be a bit racist, but for
the most part it comes down to her being from another world so stereotypes are
sometimes all she has for reference.
After she had that thought while walking through town she needed a
drink not just for thirst but also for the things she doesn’t know and the
things she was stupid about because at the base of any form of
narrow-mindedness is folly.
The bartender in The Fear Smear, sporting a perm mullet, wearing a
t-shirt with LAST FUCK TICKET across the chest in big letters spotted her as
she walked in, ‘Can I help you with something lady?’
It’s fair to say it’s not every day that an attractive woman with
blood red long hair, sporting biker wear, and a Russian army winter long jacket
enters The Fear Smear.
Green sat down on a bar stool that positioned her between two very
large men in police uniforms.
She noticed that one of the officers smelled like used cereal
milk.
The other one didn’t smell at all but for a slight hint of mint. He turned
to Green and smiled, ‘Visiting?’
That was a very large one word question. Had several questions
behind it.
Her answer had several stories behind it, ‘Just a trip along the
history lines.’
The Interrupted Light…
He was simply called The Hermit of Sierra Morena.
Standing with a stature of slightly bent over posture and limbs that hung from
his body like thousand pound weights. Put together with sunken eyes with dark
circles and hair that smelled and appeared as if it was twisted pieces of thick
rope. He fit the hermit part in every bit of his appearance.
He also had a voice that echoed like a strong
soldiering warrior and that voice just did not fit with his appearance.
The Hermit lived a sparse life in a small shack that
would fall down just to be put back together after every storm, storms small or
large. It was not built to withstand weather as much as survive it and that
notion sat into his way of life the past few years.
He lived off a small garden outside his home
consisting for the most part of potatoes and onions. What non-food items he
would need were gained through work for a local exiled royal family from
another country not his own. This was a job that divinely fell into his lap
when one of the family’s horses ran off and was found snacking on potatoes in
his garden.
For years the hermit worked
the grounds of the exiled family’s home. He taught languages to the family’s two
children Abigail and Abialbon. Before having their new teacher enter into their
lives the children were a bit on the wild side but their teacher not only
brought knowledge into their lives but also emotional control.
In his previous way of life the hermit was both a
doctor and a teacher. That was before the Great War, before he lost everything,
including his faith.
After years of being the hermit
of Sierra Morena and the teacher to a family which came to be no longer exiled
and royal once again the hermit would grow sicker by the day living out life in
his small shack being cared for by Abigail who stayed behind to take care of
her former teacher.
A quick mention of what would become of Abialbon. He
would grow to become a legendary ruler and would be known by other names. You
can visit his burial site even to this day. It’s near the ancient site of
Stonehenge. But I wouldn’t try digging if I was you, were The Hermit taught
Abigail the arts of healing and teaching, he gave Abialbon the lessons needed to
rule by the fist against things living or dead.
One day while Abigail was out
shopping for food in a nearby village the old hermit was tending his flower
garden, which once feed him, but now feed only natures beauty.
Pulling weeds from the garden the hermit noticed a
glow in the center of a flower. The light zoomed out from the center of the
flower and entered the hermit’s skull but left no mark to see.
Though no mark was made a sound was heard throughout
the nearby lands as if a skull just cracked in half. The hermit fell back into
his garden with a thud and the soil of the Earth touched him with a warmth that
made its way all throughout his body.
The next thing the hermit saw when he opened his eyes
while still laying prone flat on the ground was a young women standing over him
with only a small bit of clothing hanging off one hip but otherwise nude.
Her hair was long and black and she had tanned skin.. Though her skin was tanned in color upon sight you
could see from time to time veins bubble up underneath the surface of her skin
as if lit by some source of light flowing through her body.
He would later recall that she smelled of new life.
She had blood leaking from her, a grisly sight to a man of his age and
time. This image was there to get his attention, to awaken his mind.
As the hermit sat up onto his knees she knelt down
beside him. She stopped his movements with a finger touch to his forehead and
then she slowly began to stroke his hair.
‘Drink from my mind. You shall be a messenger of A
One True Church.’
That’s What She Said.
Honest.
It’s in a holy book.
And holy books are watertight.
After he did what he was told
in a ceremony of pure obedience the Virgen placed a small old button into the
palm of his hand.
‘This button came from my sons
clothing. You will know the moment when it is to be used with a tool of the
time to create your own Angels who shall bring an end to all who oppose the
strength of our church.’
The hermit put his hands
together in prayer fighting through the rigidness that had beenforced upon his
body.
‘Holy mother?’
The Virgen kissed his
forehead.
‘The True Church is not only
splintered messenger. Our Church is dying and was never here in full life to
begin with. I have spoken to my son. Your people shall be granted great gifts
beyond the mortal realm. He has granted you the task of the Great Inquisitions
to grow your legend.’
The Virgen left in a flash
of light. The next thing the hermit saw was Abigail returning from her
shopping.
The hermit would grow stronger
and younger as the years passed. He would marry his former student and thus be
joined with royalty and power. Through time he and his followers would gain great
powers and influence but kept most of that power and influence below the eyes
of the rest of the world until times when it was needed. During certain times
of conflict they would make moves to reestablish the True Churches foothold
into the world.
The world is nothing but conflict and conflict is where power
can grow and feed.
Billy Clark is a senior at Pound High School, located
in Southwest Virginia, a small former coal mining town. These days the town is
more in love with former days of football glory, the assassination of a
president, and now for being the home town of Bobby Clark than any coal mines
or black lung cases.
The story of Bobby Clark is
now so widely known that I would guess that every person has an opinion and
reaction to his name coming up in conversation. Bobby Clark as we all have
found out was a former sports star while attending high school but now is known
as the murder of over thirteen people on a carnage binge that stretched from
Virginia to Florida.
He was arrested a month ago saying nothing except, ‘I
killed them.’ The papers called him, ‘The Redneck Killer’ but others also
called him family.
The police busted him at a
local gas station near his home town while he was paying for a large ice coffee
and a hamburger. There might be a gas shortage and rumors of a growing
worldwide food shortages but people still haven’t spotted the stupidity of cold
coffee and greasy burgers.
The authorities traced his whereabouts through credit
card transactions from several of his victim’s accounts. From each of his
victims he always took a credit card or two and purchased such random things
as- a complete set of Abba CDs, two cases of light bulbs, a Mickey Mouse
t-shirt, a case of poprocks, a pizza, and several used copies of a few old
country music records. The F.B.I. said it was as if he was trying to get
caught.
The police say they think he was just nuts.
Those police, they are so smart.
Bobby’s family was making plans to get out of town in
a few months. Everything had just gotten too violent for them to remain in the
place their family had lived for generations. But those plans were canceled
when Bobby’s father Ronnie left right after his son was given the death
judgment and he left with a good deal of the family’s money.
Bobby’s brother Billy and sister Mary are being kept in school by their mother. Some have said it is sadistic of her to do so
because of how they have been treated in school and allowed to be treated by
police and school officials wherever they go.
With reporters outside their house twenty four seven
she honestly thought school was a good place for them since reporters and the
like have been banned from school grounds. Isn’t it funny how parents always
forget how cruel and brutal high school can be?
Yep, I don’t find that funny either.
Though to be honest at the moment Billy could not find
any logic in any shape or form as a large meaty fist hit him square in the nose
shattering cartilage and splitting flesh. The impact of the punch from jock
wrestler Jason Poole sent Billy falling back against one of the wet walls of
the boys gym showers.
He slides down the shower wall, squeaking during the
slide flesh against tile, with a towel around his waist which fell from around
him before his ass hit the floor of the showers.
Billy quickly recalled the
time when Mary busted his nose. He put his hand to his face and as he moved his
fingers against his nose he felt what seemed to be loose bits. He wondered if
his nose had been shattered into little pieces, which it had, and if one piece,
he wished, that one piece would please go into his brain and kill him. That
would be ok with him.
He hoped for that.
He prayed for that.
But he wasn’t going to get what he hoped for, what he
prayed for, what he just wanted as a human being who was really tired, too
tired for someone his age to be.
Billy was still breathing, though
not very well, as he looked up and saw four others besides Jason standing in
the showers. There was Michael Evans, Greg Barrles, David Poole, and Mark
Stipe. All jocks but that really has no meaning at all because of something I
can’t remember that fucking Microsoft Word erased!
I do know it wasn’t just jocks that hated Billy’s
family. The mob simmer was almost ready to boil out onto the surface of this
town and this was maybe step one in turning up the temperature.
David Poole, Jason’s brother
kicked Billy twice in the chest, cutting Billy’s chest slightly with an over
grown big toenail.
They all laughed as Billy laid there with a puzzled
look on his face. He wasn’t puzzled at all but was just wondering why more of
the same hadn’t already taken place?
Through the others laughter Greg Banks, a former good
friend of Billy’s spoke, ‘You know who is standing by the doors Billy? Coach
Kent is standing right out there and we are going to beat you until you are
never able to walk into this scho...Hey?...What are you?!’ The five jocks backed
away as Billy slowly started to ...well, use your imagination, in front of them while laying on the
floor in a fetal position.
At first all of them just
watched him move him and before they left the showers running yelling
for Coach Kent.
Moments later Coach Kent came into the showers and
picked Billy up who was still at it. He didn’t see any reason to
stop just because some big muscled former jock had come into the showers and
picked him up. In fact normally he would have wished for such a
situation.
Coach Kent punched Billy in
the chest taking his breath away.
Sometimes The
Dream Trail is a very curious and odd place.
The
Interrupted Light…
Billy woke from his sleep in his own bedroom, at his
family’s home. He noticed where he was and continued with the feeling from his
dream until he had ruined another pair of shorts.
He climbed out of bed and walked into his bathroom,
stuffed the newly soiled shorts under the garbage in the bathroom trash. He
looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and a bit of normality moved slowly
into his brain. He was thinking about how parents must know something is up if
their kids keep running low on underwear?
After that small piece of ordinariness and some
mouthwash he climbed into the shower. He forgot himself for a moment letting
the scolding hot water hit his back and just as blisters started to come up he
remembered that he needed to get ready quick because his brother’s execution
was in three hours.
Shampoo, soap, towel, clothes, and ready.
This story will not
be about people of pure guilt or pure innocence. This is a story about a family
living to get to the next day, one family breathing in and out and then having
their air ripped from them by very powerful people.
Family and
human beings dipping below to the animal part in us all to remain sane and
family reaching for more to keep them from going insane and noticing what has
and is happening around them is true insanity.
And it’s about manipulation.
Boy is it about manipulation.
This is about power, this is about death, and somewhere
in there, beneath it all when we close our eyes to what happens on the streets,
beneath when we mute the nightly news, beneath the stories we say could only
happen in movies or from sick minds is a speck of actual hope.
I did so ramble. I do that.
It was a rainy day ready for a death to take place.
All this setting needed was a crow to land outside the prison on the road sign
that posted the name of the prison as the Clark family’s car passed by on the
muddy road leading up to the prison walls and it would have been the opening to
a scene in a creepy horror novel or at least the opening of a creepy horror novel
adapted to the silver screen because I don’t read many creepy horror novels.
Take a moment from reading that sentence and take a
breath.
The car moved past the
reporters, guards, and protesters (pro and con) gathered outside the prison
gates. The extra security brought in for the day has to slowly walk the car
through the crowds into the outer parking lot through the prison walls to the
interior parking area.
This did not rattle the family a bit because how much
more can you rattle a family who has gone through what this family has gone
through. They are not rattled now but have been beaten into some sort of state
of calm which would be scary if they had the time and took the time to think
about their emotional states. The Clark family weren’t actually the most stable
family mentally in the first place, then came the adventures of Bobby The
Redneck Serial Killer, and things just stepped up a bit.
Once they parked their car the
family was lead by prison guards into an exercise yard were normally at this
time, even during a rain storm, prisoners would be all over the place. It was
empty at the moment. The area was empty of persons of the prisoner sort but
full to the hilt with tension and dread. That was normal for a prison though,
nothing to do with the main event of the day, the death of a man.
From the exercise yard came Warden Kain came out to
meet the Clark family. They traveled as a group with the best of the prisons
security detail through several empty cell blocks. More than a few prisoners
were going to spend a few hours crammed four to a built for one man cell. They
have been cattled off also to keep any press there for the execution seeing the
crammed tuna.
Billy was walking behind his sister Mary thinking
about what kind of future she could have with how their lives have gone so far.
Walking beside Mary was their mother Lubar and as always Lubar’s every other
thought was on how much she hated her name. His father is still missing and the
strange thing is the family is treating him in each of their own minds separate
from the influence of the others as if he never existed at all. No Father Knows
Best moments in this family’s history.
Warden Kain led the Clark
family into a viewing room. They are the only ones there since not one member
of any of the victims’ families had wished to attend the execution. Since the
victims’ families would not be there Billy’s mom asked if they could attend as
her oldest child died. Mary and Billy both insisted they accompany their mother
to watch their brother die. Some might call this morbid or even insane but in a
story full of little and large positions of insanity, what is one more thrown
in the mix?
And to be honest for the Clark family this is not
about saying good bye as much as once again reinforcing in their minds that all
of the Fucked Up was not a dream and all too real.
The Warden left with words to
Lubar that if they wanted they could leave at any time. The viewing room was
covered by a curtain over the viewing window. Mary and Billy sat each to one
side of their mother. Billy noted in his mind how everyday this was. He closed
his eyes and thought maybe, just maybe the curtain would fall and out would
step a clown to start a show. But when this curtain parted the show that was to
follow would be one of death.
Weeks later Billy would have a dream of the curtain
dropping and his brother dancing around in clown makeup to generic carnival
music slitting the throats of all of the prison officials in the room with him.
Have you seen the movie Dead
Man Walking? Well, neither has Billy but Bobby Clark did. He saw Dead
Man Walking at a friend’s house during a drunken movie night. The only
thing he can think about right now is blood, no movie plots here. The blood on
his hands would not go away with the passage of time and neither would killing
him erase the stains of death etched onto his soul. He has never been in denial
about what he did, nor has he ever had one thought that what he was doing was
in any way justified or in measure.
Three guards- one black, one
white, and one female that smelled like carrots gone wrong escorted Bobby down
the corridor which only had two exits from it, to the cafeteria and to the
library. The layout of a prison sometimes tells so many stories of humanity in
the map itself. Through the journey Bobby thinks about nothing but blood...and
another man who must die living in Florida. The death penalty is an o so
personal experience carried out by strangers and those with no link to the
crimes committed. The issue is not clear but it does not matter what views you
have, have one single untouchable truth, the truth of death.
Billy could hear movement
behind the curtains. The noises reminded him of the sounds heard backstage at a
play. He knows this because he once starred in a production of Anthem. His imagination races from
thoughts of stage hands getting props just right, and actors adjusting each other’s
costumes for that last little tweak, to someone walking his brother into a
white room to prepare him to die. To be killed. Someone right now behind that
curtain is thinking at the same time about taking his brother’s life and what
they are going to pick up for dinner on the way home.
After a few minutes the
curtains opened and a second later three guards walked into the room with Bobby
in hand. Bobby looked over to see his mother, brother, and sister and he was a
little surprised to see them there even though he was told by the Warden that
they had decided to attend. Attend? Makes it sound like just a weekend
excoriation. Ticket stub.....placed slowly into a memory
book.....event.....blood.....death.
Not even for a second from the
time he was arrested to this moment right before his own death has Bobby
stopped thinking about his family. What if someone had taken one of their
lives? What did they think of him? His family visited him in prison but he always
felt like they were there only because they loved who he was and not who he
still is.
Bobby knew his thoughts may have been false and maybe
off the rail a bit. He was a serial killer after all, not the clearest thinking
bunch...but wait, he did know that was wrong also. He knew exactly what he was
doing, what he did, and what was going to happen to him and what was happening
now. We love to paint death and those who take life as different from ourselves
and so off from the rest of humanity but most are just human beings who walked
off the road somehow and never returned.
The media would record that
Bobby smiled as they began to strap him into the chair. The Tv shows would have
bogus doctors on to speak on the reflection of evil on his face. They would
have someone on to talk also about the victims’ families, how they have reacted
bravely and also how cowardly they are in signing book deals. The media will
call Bobby Clark’s family shit pieces of humanity and they will cast the whole
situation as pointing points to how the modern world is decayed. They will act
as if this has never happen before in the history of the world...until it happens
for the first time again in two months.
At the point when Bobby was
being strapped into the chair his mother got up and left the viewing room. Mary
followed her to be with her mother and motioned for Billy to follow but he
stayed. He was prepared to see every moment of the death of his brother. He
wanted to remember this for the rest of his life, even if he did not totally
understand why he felt that way.
Billy focused his eyes on the
sight of the doctor injecting Bobby with the poison cocktail. The chemicals
swam their way through his older brother’s body and his brother’s body began to
twitch randomly in reaction.
A few cases come in situations of lethal injection
when it is clear that the person is allergic to the poison and if that could
even be said, aren’t we all? Bobby was deathly allergic to the deadly cocktail
injection of drugs. His arms quickly swelled, his face swelled, and he started
bleeding from every opening in his body. The swelling reddened the stretch of
his skin on his skinny frame and at points for stress failure blood dripped its
way through.
Then
he was dead.
