Another Outbreak...

Zombie flash mob on Market Street yesterday.

The Goth shambler kept mumbling something about my dark, sweet brain. The Z-head nurse gave me the cold shoulder.

ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD

The All-Seeing Eye Socket

I was browsing through adolescent themed websites earlier this week when I saw an image so horrifying it stopped me cold.

I skipped the video's of amateur back-yard wrestlers and skate-board fiascoes, scrolled directly to the still photos. The thumb-nail was pretty unappealing, a human head with two hands holding an eye open. I cannot imagine what possessed me to click on the link.

The eye must have been removed from the socket for some time. There was no blood or fluids in the socket. The background flesh had a dark orange color. There was a pinched yellowish circular ring where the optic nerve once had been. The sides of the socket were covered with what I can only describe as buds. They too were dark yellow, like slightly burned corn. They rose from circular bases to a pointed tip, like tulip bulbs almost ready to bloom.

The hands obscure most of the face, but you can clearly see the mouth frozen in a desperate scream.

The image faded from memory that night and I slept. After waking the next morning, the image jumped into my head. I was dizzy and a little queasy.

Until Monday I was fairly sure that I had seen so much in my three dozen years that I was jaded beyond feeling fear or disgust. I could not have been more wrong. I still feel intermittent panic attacks thinking about what I've seen. Now I know the power of real horror.

I can only guess that H.P. Lovecraft felt the same way when he tried to describe the soul-shrinking elder gods he saw in his dreams. I can only hope that writing about this helps exorcise the image of the all-seeing eye socket.

Home sweet home

The house I grew up in was a monument to learned incompetence. My parents both had advanced degrees, yet we weren't allowed to hang pictures on the walls for fear of damaging the plaster (it was an old house). Apparently the technology to repair plaster was lost sometime after the fall of Rome and still had not been rediscovered.
You put white clothing in the hamper at your peril. It was understood that anything in that pile was doomed to mysteriously turn pink.
No one wanted to reveal that they possessed basic domestic skills. The masequerade went on for close to two decades.

X-mas Blues

Another lonely ape started hanging out at the dog-park.

The holidays are tough on everyone.

Death Face

We painted our death faces and sharpened our knives. I may have looked like an evil clown with a Kabar, but I was ready to face my doom.

Radar weren't born up here, but he took to our ways. Whatever they did to him Underground was just as bad to the things I seen up Dirtside. His eyes were painted red and black teardrops on his cheeks marked every man he killed. He was awful upset about Jackie and he wasn't planning to come back without her.

The cloud-girl looked at us like we was insane. Ain't no way we could explain that this might be our final battle, and we was ready.

Campfire Chat

I approached the fire to reheat my rations. I came up to one of the squad, cleaning his rifle near the fire. I dropped my tin on the coals at the edge of he fire. He had been alternately refered to as goat-lover and crap-face, so I wasn't sure how to address him. I vaguely remember him being Libyan. He spoke first, in French.

"Lieutenant, may I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"I love my rifle. She is a Lee-Enfield Type 4 Mark 1. I found her near El Alemain after the English retreated. She was the most beautiful rifle I had ever seen."

I looked at the rifle. The woodstock had been stripped and refinished. The barrel was evenly blued and unblemished.

"My uncle taught me to shoot with his Turkish Mauser. After the Germans came I stole a German Mauser. There were good guns. You could shoot straight with them and reload quickly. But they were not my Enfield."

He turned to me and smiled. His teeth gleamed brightly, reflecting the fire.

"Her name is Veronique. We have killed many Germans together. When the fighting stopped in the dessert, I took her back to my village. I took her apart and stripped the lacquer from her wood. I restained her with Khalesh oil... it is a vegetable we grow. The blacksmith resurfaced the steel. She is the most beautiful rifle of her kind."

I shifted a bit, nodded, pulled my tin out of the coals, and started to eat.

"The Sergeant calls her Avril to try to annoy me. He is a pig-lover, and stupid besides. He is jealous of the great love we share."

At this point I resigned myself to riding out this conversation. Veronique's man was either insane, or pulling my leg. I was determined to show my patience and/or sense of humor.

He smiled again.

"You are a good man, Lieutenant. I hope you find a gun you can love someday."

He put down the barrel brush and oily rags on a cloth and inserted the bolt back into the rifle. He rolled up the cloth and gently stepped through the camp back to his tent.