The Old Lady and the Imps (a short story)

The Old Lady and the Imps
(or, ‘Festival of Death’)






“Away”! Cried the lofty one, to Marlene LLosa, he was the angel of death, and he came with several demonic imps.
“Those without souls are mine,” he stipulated.
A wild mournful expression passed her lips. Her husband, Edilberto was dying in bed, he should, according to the doctors, been dead hours ago, he looked at her, and her at him, and she sank down to her knees by the bed, hands over her eyes.
“Those without souls are mine,” murmured Death, in its black robe, and the imps cried, “Feed us were hungry,” and she did.
“I expected,” said Marlene, looking at her husband, and a peripheral view of the Black Angel of Death, “I expected an angel of hope and joy, not this you, who brings only sorrow, and your array of little demonic beings.”
He did not answer her back; he just looked at her with a blank expression.
“Edilberto!” cried the angel of death yelled, “The dead is thine!” He did not dispute this, he simply remained quiet and in suspense, thereafter.
“What does that mean,” asked Marlene, looking at her husband, directing the question to him, but he didn’t answer her.
Strange she thought, perhaps this is all fantasy, an illusion, betwixt, the near to dead face of her husband, appeared indifferent, near depression, anxiety, forlorn, but resigned to his fate.
“So you were waiting for a creature of hope, were you?” said the angel of death, adding (as the little imps danced around in circles laughing, keep death entertained), “Will, you be silent to your wife on your death bed?” the Dark Angel elaborated to Edilberto. He did not respond again.
“I shall call; bid the dead to speak on your behalf, why hope is gone, as soon will be joy?” Said the Dark Angel.
“Leave us,” said Marlene, “go!”
“And what shall be thy token between you two?” asked the Dark Angel.
“I will keep a lock of his hair, until I die, to remember him by, that we shall meet again,” and right then and there she cut a lock off, and put it in her palm, closed her hand making a fist, with her other hand, she held his. And then the angel of death laughed, as did his companions, even Edilberto, seemed to show a light impression of humor on his face, as if the ceremony she just did was silly, hopeless.
Said Marlene, with quivering lips, “You too, you both laugh, you’ve been a good husband, and I’ve been a good wife for fifty-years, and you laugh with the angel of death.”
She then stood up, walked to the door, hearing some noise in the hallway, and there were several demonic beings there, waiting, imps and fiends and devils and demigods from hell.
“What are you all waiting here for?” she asked kindly.
“For him,” a voice said, “to pass away, to die, oh yes, to die, and die quickly, so we can take him to ‘The Festival of Death! And have merriment”’
A taint of insanity appeared to shape her husband’s face, he sat up, on his bed, quiet, and utterly free from expression—just a stare. He looked about, harmless, unaffected by the demonic beings all about.
“Soon,” he said, “I will be a corpse. There are two kinds of beings born on this planet Marlene, the pre Adamic, without souls, and those born under the shadow of Adam, with souls. Between these two, there are no friendships, nor kindred spirits, in one sense it is pretense, he can imagine God in His glory, but that is all he cannot feel him, it is like having a blank piece of paper. He is born indifferent. We have fooled the public for nearly 8000-years. I was born under the shadow of affliction, without a soul. I married you, and I will never know why, for you have a soul.
“The Great Funeral, is the same as the Great Flood, it killed next to all soulless ancestors, and as years went on, so did the Festival of Death, celebrating that event in that God did not kill all of us. This is why those folks in the hallway are waiting; it is their turn to attend one. There is no negotiating in this disdainful situation, it is as it is.”
“Should I hold a funeral for you?” she cried, still holding the lock of hair in her hands, and again on her knees, holding his hand.
She raised her eyes, “But you even went to Church with me?”
Before he could answer that statement-question, Agaliarept, the Henchman from hell appeared in the room (untimely as it was, and intrusive, Agaliarept was always associated with the dead, but normally he arrived after the death had taken place, and tagged along to enjoy the festival. All were hushed upon his arrival.
“The Festival has started; he should be dead by now, what is the problem? Why does he live?” asked Agaliarept.
“Perhaps,” said the angel of death, because his wife has a soul, and she is so close to him, and will not move.”
Slowly, feeble and heavily he fell back under his covers on the bed, her hand in his, the lock of hair in her other hand.
“She’ll get tired soon,” said Agaliarept with a sneer, “and when she does, he will die, and you two (he looked at a imp, and a guard from hell named Gwen) grab his inners, pull him like a rag-doll out of this room, and be done with it.”

To Agaliarept, this was not a satisfactory situation, and he could not take ownership of the spirit of this man neither—at best it was a momentary dilemma, so he felt, fixable, but time consuming: thus, he dare not grab onto this man when it was so close to the soul of a Godly woman, and there she sat, and there he lay, and there they both died, hand in hand, and both buried, hand in hand, in the same tomb, by each other, hands unmoved, as the moonbeams shine over their grave, and a guard from the angel of death sat with his Imp friend for company, waiting for them to be separated, deep down in their quiet tomb.

2-17-2009

San Francisco Hotel Sweeper (1968, a short story)

San Francisco Hotel Sweeper


Those mornings I’d walk the streets of San Francisco, somewhat unsure of what I’d find, looking for work, and then as the morning progressed into day, and near noon, it would turn about with producing a cool warm summer air, a fresh breeze. I’d walk by this certain hotel, it looked to be at one time, a grand hotel of sorts, now a bit warn, and more on the dim side of its life, up and own, and around its frame you could see its age, its name was evidently well known, still at a certain highbrow level, it was a landmark, of sorts and sweeping the sidewalk each morning, appeared a certain bum like character, in shabby overalls, unshaven, thin looking, not too tall, half his teeth in his head were missing, his fingers a slight bent, a kind natured person, just sweeping away, as if he had no cares in the world, as jolly as could be, as if he had a secret and only he knew it, as if the Golden Fleece itself, I stopped and talked to him a number of times, he said he had been doing that job, sweeping, and cleaning out the furnace, and putting in light fixtures in the basement, and so forth, going on fourteen-years. I couldn’t believe it. And he said, and said it humble, and gratefully, and with pride,
“I get to sleep down by the furnace, it’s warm there, I like it there, and it’s private.”
And he smiled with a funny kind of grin, as if he had swallowed a gold fish, I mean, he was happy with his simple life, and simple it was, and I thought at the time, how kind it was for the hotel to put this poor soul in a bed and give him a roof over his head and a warm spot to warm his feet, and not charge him a dime, and as a result, only expect him to do an hours worth of work, if that.

I saw him off and on, as I previously mentioned, nodded my head off and on when I saw him, and passed him by. He’d step clear of me, and face the street, like an old soldier, standing at attention, as if I was an officer, a General. Always smiling, never displeased, a merry old soul I always figured. Matter of fact, I enjoyed walking down the street, and a few times, if it was morning, and I was down in that area, I’d purposely walk by the hotel, hoping he’d be out, and I could say hello, and more often than not he was. A few times he was going in, or just coming out of the side door of the hotel, but no matter what, if he got a glimpse of me, he’d smile, wave.
‘What makes a man like that,’ I thought at the time. Most people don’t smile, and surely not to strangers. But he wasn’t like most people, he was different. A bum I used to say to myself, he’s just an old bum, no more, and I thought I was being kind to even talk to him, and I was perhaps more bum than he, I had no job, I was twenty-years old, a Midwestern boy, far from home. Yet I told myself, don’t make any judgments, he perhaps had a hard life. He was, or so it appeared that he was in his late sixties, or early seventies, if I remember right, that’s what I thought, didn’t know at that particular moment, told myself he was, back in 1968.

As I was about to say, I walked by him, and he would be waiting, standing aside as if he was my chauffeur. I liked him. Anyhow I’d kept walking looking for work, knocking on doors, listening to the sounds of the street; the tires going by, I like such sounds, the sounds of birds, the horns of cars, and so forth. Then one day, a few months down the road, I picked up a newspaper, and found out he had died. Just up and died, he was sixty-six years old that was a ripe old age I guess, back then. But what startled me, what really fascinated me above all was not that, although it was sad he had died, and perhaps not of a real old, old age—I even took a closer look at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the same person—it read and reread it, it said,
“(so and so)…leaves $250,000-dollars to the hotel in his will.”
‘If that don’t beat all,’ I told myself.
I tell you, you just do not know a thing about other people. Perhaps my first lesson in absolute misjudging, and I never called a bum a bum again: don’t judge the person because he looks the way he looks.
I was now proud to have known him, I wonder way, perchance could it be the money he left to the hotel. The hotel was most gratified, and seemed sincere that the old fellow passed on. And by the looks of the hotel, it needs every penny of it to update it. As I write this out, forty years have passed, and $250,000-dollars then, would possibly be equal to four times that amount, figuring it doubles every ten years. Something like that, thus, it would be like receiving a million dollars today, for renovation purposes, if not more.


Originally written in the summer months of 2008, and reedited and modified, in the winter months, of 2009.

The Mother of an Urn (a Short Story on Death)

The Mother of an Urn




When his mother (Teresa Gunderson) died he was fifty-five years old, and her ashes were put into a wooden urn, with a cross on it, and a butterfly, she liked butterflies that’s why he specifically picked it out.
His brother, Mick Gunderson, thought they’d have a wake, of sorts, small just for the family, and Mick did all the coordinating, and calling up relatives (to include allowing his brother’s wife Delia, to attend in his place if she wished and bring the urn), and so forth, while Lee (the younger brother), insured everything was paid for, and collected what little money his mother left from her bank account, and insurance policies and so forth, enough for the urn, and wake, with a few dollars left over, but not much.
Well, when the time came for the wake, everyone showed up but Lee, for whatever reasons they were, he did not give to the family members, to include his brother.
The urn was set between two vases of flowers, and on a platform, with a podium for those who wanted to give an elegy, and Mick Gunderson gave his elegy, and his older daughter Sharma, the oldest of the nieces, gave her sentiments, as Teresa Gunderson’s brother Wally, and her several sisters sat in chairs just below the platform, asking where, and why Lee had not shown up (his wife informing him of the light conversations concerning his nonappearance, after her return home from the wake). The elder niece Sharma, noticed this also, and brought it up to her father’s attention. And the wake continued unabated.
As time went by, family members asked—if the the younger brother Lee, whom had the urn in his home, wanted to throw the ashes of his mother into the river, and be done with it, as his mother had said to do, but more in jest, than seriousness.
“No,” said Lee, adding: he couldn’t.
“Let me do it then,” said one of the family members, “I see you have it right in the middle of your living room, like a shrine.”
Later on, Sharma said to her father,
“What’s the sense of my uncle having those dead ashes of grandma in the house anyway?”
Whereupon a month later the older brother, Mick told his younger brother Lee, what his daughter had said, Lee took a slight offense to it but left it alone, knowing they knew little about anything in life other than what their immediate environment provided for them, in their conservative city of the Midwest.
After a long while, a year or so, another family member brought the subject up again, this time it was the daughter of Sherrill, the younger niece to Lee, and sister to Sharma, her seventeen year old daughter Carmella, mentioned to her grandfather, about her great uncle, saying,
“Why does my great uncle, keep ashes of a dead person in the house, how sick that is?”
The Grandfather, Mick Gunderson, told his younger brother of his granddaughter’s remark, perhaps a rhetorical question.
“She doesn’t know much does she,” the younger brother said, adding, “if she had done any living, or traveling, she’d understand other cultures, that there are different ways of life, of thinking, she would understand this is not so uncommon, among the other two-hundred countries that surround the United States of America, and therefore, it wouldn’t seem so unusual, or odd, or sick, they keep them in many countries in their houses, such as in Asia, and East Europe in particular—I’ve seen them myself, matter of fact, they keep the bones of the relatives out in the open, on shelves, in Cambodia, in a person’s backyard. Perhaps she thinks she’s too above everybody else, or she lives in box, all tightly bound that says: USA only.”
The older brother didn’t say a word, what could he say, he, himself was confused on the issue, and did little traveling outside of the United States, nor got involved with other countries, or cultures to weigh his brother’s statement, and Lee didn’t give him the reason why he did what he did, feeling it was his business, and no one else’s, and didn’t think it was such a big deal, or worthy of a long explanation, especially coming the mouths of arrogance.

Another year had passed by, then Lee decided to move, was about to move to South America, from Minnesota, his wife being Latin American, she had now lived in the United States going on six-years. During the process of selling his furniture, the issue of his mother’s urn came up again, during a visit,
“Why?” said Carmella, then added, “Look mom, my great uncle still has my Great Grandmother’s ashes,” and gave a horrifying look on her face, as she looked upon them.
Lee paid her little attention, and walked away as soon as she ended her sentence, and made her face to show her mother her disgust, and he went back to take care of business. She had said it in the sly, and didn’t realize he overheard her.

Soon after, Lee moved to South America and of course, brought his mother’s urn with the ashes in it, with him, right onto the airplane, and right on his lap.
A year after that, Lee’s brother Mick, brought up the issue over the phone, saying,
“You still got mom’s ashes?”
“For god’s sake,” Lee emphatically said, “it’s none of your business, you never wanted them in the first place, and I asked you.”
The older brother thought on this, like his two daughters thought, as they talked this issue over (a while back, prior to this phone call), for they had said, “What kind of man will not go to his mother’s wake, but keep her ashes as if they were sacred?”
One voice among the four had said this to all the rest.
The older niece, Sharma had said, “I bet grandma would like to rise from her grave and damn him!”
But then the brother had calmed down, told his two daughters, and granddaughter, “Its best left alone, we don’t know the whole of it.”
It was during this time, that Mick called Lee up, as I had just mentioned, and during that conversation, asked him kindly,
“Why is it brother you keep her ashes and never went to her wake, I ask you out of love, not scorn or judgment, and because the subject has come up in my family surroundings.”
“Because,” he said, “it’s my mother, its really nobody else’s business, but perhaps it is yours somewhat. You see, she was so dear to me, and she is so much dearer now to me, and I could not think of her being gone, thrown into a river, or left idle in a cemetery, where all those who said they loved her would never visit her, only left for the birds to flyover, and dogs to run by—perhaps urinate on her grave stone, flowers to grow around her and nobody to put them on her grave. Grandpa died 19-years ago, have you ever visited him (the brother said ‘no’), see what I mean. Now she will be with me and in a way, she never left. Had I gone to the wake I would have been sadder, this way, I will never be quite that sad. I know people talk against me, and say all sorts of unjust things, but I can say now I always had a mother.”
“That’s true,” his brother said.
And for the nieces they still continued to say, “What kind of uncle do we have?”

1-15-2009 (on the Roof, Lima, Peru)

To-Morrow is Saturday (a short Spoof: Ref: Hemingway)

To-Morrow is Saturday

(Hotel Ambos Mundos, Havana, Ernest Hemingway's
first residence in Cuba (1932-1939) where most of
For Whom the Bell Tolls was written)


Two Bellboys are guessing what Ernest Hemingway is writing in his hotel room at the Hotel Ambos Mundos, Havana, it is summer of, they are in the bar, drinking down some beer, they’re a little tispy.


1st Bellboy—You know what novel he’s working on now?
2nd Bellboy—No, how would I know.
1st Bellboy—I bet you do know, you’re in his room all the time, you should.
Cuban Bartender—Here you boys go, you’ll like it (He pours two large glasses full of beer, filled to the brim of each of the glasses, and places a pitcher of beer alongside the two glasses). That’s a nice cold pitcher too, on the house.
1st Bellboy—Manual’s kind to us employees, always giving us a little extra, on the house, be sorry to see him go, too bad that writer isn’t like that! Rather moody if you ask me.
2nd Bellboy—It’s best you don’t mention his name too loud, news gets around fast, plus I got a head ache.
1st Bellboy—You’ve drank that beer down too fast, its too hot to be doing that, gulp it slower.
2nd Bellboy—It cools my insides down.
1st Bellboy—You’ve been in the sun too long.
2nd Bellboy—Say, Manuel, tell my friend here what Ernest Hemingway is working on in his room, what book now?
Cuban Bartender—Maybe he’s rewriting that book “Sun don’t Rise” now how do I know, you ask silly questions.
(The 1st Bellboy fills his glass back up with beer from the pitcher).
2nd Bellboy—Hay Manuel, what else did you put into the beer glass?—it looks like coffee grounds?
Cuban Bartender—Just drink it and shut up, it’s just some cigarette ashes fell into your glass, your cigarette ashes, to be truthful, you’re just too cock-eyed to notice, it’ll make you walk upside down.
(All three start to laugh)
1st Bellboy—Take a guess at what he’s writing…
Bartender –-You talking to me?
1st Bellboy—I’m looking at you, so I must be talking to you.
Bartender—You were really out of it last night, but so was he, you know, the writer, he told you what he was writing, because you asked him, it sounded like, “Bell and “Toll”, whatever, that means.
(The two bellboys look at one another; both take a drink of their beers, the 1st Bellboy looks confused, the other one impressed.)
1st Bellboy—Holy Hemingway, what do you say, to that.
(He raises his eyebrows, looks at his pal, and then the bartender.)
2nd Bellboy—The big man talked to you, haw, and you didn’t tell me!”
1st Bellboy—Oh, I can’t remember, we both must have been drunk.
2nd Bellboy—Maybe he’ll come out of his tomb tonight and drink with us peasants.
1st Bellboy—He don’t like Cubans, he only likes writing about us, that’s his game.
2nd Bellboy—Show me a guy that doesn’t have a game in motion.
1st Bellboy—I got it, “For Whom the Toad Bellows,” that’s his new book, ask Manual, he’ll tell yaw.
Cuban Bartender—I tell you both once and for all, I don’t know, but I guess it’s something like that, “Bell a Toll,” something like that in the title or maybe “The Bell Toll” not sure what toll means though.
2nd Bellboy—I think when he gets drunk he likes to brag his work up a little…or maybe a lot!
1st Bellboy—I like the book “Women that can’t find Men” that one was pretty good.
Bartender—You got the name wrong, it’s “Men Don’t need Women.”
2nd Bellboy—I don’t think he’d write something like that, and who cares what he’s writing anyhow, my head hurts.
Bartender—I’m one who really don’t care, just change the subject.
1st Bellboy—I was surprised he even talked to me last night.
Bartender— Don’t be too surprised, he was even talking to the dog, the floor and some ghosts, new ones from Madrid.
2nd Bellboy—Maybe I’ll be lucky tonight and he’ll come down out of that room of his and talk to me.
1st Bellboy—What became of his women?
2nd Bellboy—They faded out when he got married. Actually some of them got tired of his moods; he got married didn’t he?
Bartender—The men stick around him all right, it’s just the women get tired of his mouth, and ways.
1st Bellboy—You’ll get into trouble talking that way.
Bartender—Boys it’s getting late, got to close up here soon, so drink up, and well finish this discussion tomorrow.
2nd Bellboy—Why do we keep coming here, this beer just makes me pee, my head hurt, go to sleep wakeup and pee some more…and
1st Bellboy—and nothing, now look over there, the fat one leaning over and talking to the dog, I think that’s…
Bartender—I think you both had one too many that’s an old woman with a white beard. Goodnight now!
(Manual looks a little worried at the gentleman who is walking over to him, he doesn’t have a beard, nor is he fat, he’s just hairy on the forearms, drunk as a skunk, and asks):
“Which way’s the door, I’m going to La Bodeguita del Medio!”


2—11—2009 (written under the sun, on top of my roof in Lima, Peru)

Twentieth Century's Greatest Read (s)

Twentieth Century’s Greatest Read
(Novel, Novelette, or short stories)





Everybody has their own selection, I read a lot, but I normally only buy my favoured authors, and a few of them have only written one or two books I feel worthy of mentioning; on the other hand, in the Case of Mary Renault, or Hemingway, or Faulkner, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, even Erich Maria Remarque, they really do not write bad books, all their books are fairly well written. Perhaps the greatest book written, novel that is, in the 20th Century’s “The Great Gatsby,” (the worse being, James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’), ‘and the greatest writer, who influenced the most people, was William Faulkner, so I believe. Hemingway brought in some new dialogue, and Remarque, showed us how it was over there in Europe without going in circles like Faulkner likes to do, after and during WWII. He, Remarque, was perhaps the most interesting writer, as far as action goes. F. Scott, brought us the Jazz age, and kind of stuck with that through his first four novels, the fifth, he never finished, that being “The … Last Tycoon.” That may have even surpassed the Gatsby, had he not died early on in life.
Funny, now that I look back at these writers, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, were all alcoholics.
Mary Renault being gay hid her passion between the lines in her Greek books of which she had several, I have all her books everyone of them…and all of Faulkner’s, and all of Hemingway’s, and so forth. I have found out it is easier in life to pick out the crazy few, the ones that you really like, and stick with them, instead of trying to fill your library up with junk you never want to look at after you read the first paragraph.
After Hemingway wrote “Across the River and into the Tree,” in which he was scorned for, because it was not of is old self, less than perfect, he went out and wrote, the best seller, you know which one, “The Old Man and the Sea.” That is a good book, but I would have recommended it be a short story, it gets boring.
Faulkner never wrote for the reader to read it once and forget his story, he wrote for the reader to ponder over it, because if you don’t, you lose the plot, and theme, if indeed you can find it, and it is all twisted up usually, he likes to go in circles, like Gertrude Stein often did, so it gets planted in your brain. He is difficult to read. On the other hand, Jack London, is very easy to read, who wrote a book called, “Before Adam,” a great read, and of course “The Call of the Wild,” and all those other books, of which I have about fifteen of his first editions, he wrote so much, I keep finding new books by him I never heard of, and he has some good short stories, like F. Scott, Hemingway and Faulkner. He was clear in his writings, surprisingly so, because he belonged to that alcoholic punch I just mentioned a moment ago.
In any case here is my 20th century list:





The Great Gatsby
Go Down, Moses
The Fifth Column…
Before Adam
I, Claudius
Call of the Wild
Absalom, Absalom!
The Sound and the Fury
A Movable Feast
To Kill a Mockingbird
Light in August
The Beautiful and Damned
The Jazz Age
Kind were her Kisses
The Persian Boy
The Mask of Apollo
Pillars of the Earth
Flight over Water
A Passage to India
The First Man in Rome
The Grass Crown
Across the River and into the Trees
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Far Well to Arms
The Night in Lisbon
The Arch of Triumph
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Lost World
Neverwhere
Dharma Bum
Letters to Allen Ginsberg

The Demon Lover (A Poetic dialogue between a demon and his lover)

The Demon Lover
((A Poetic dialogue between a demon and his lover) (witticism at its best))


In their apartment, in ‘Times Square,’ NY, NY


I.

A woman wailing, “No—not a bit bad!” she exclaims.
“Not bad at all—d’you think?” she adds.
“Rather good,” said the demon.
“What time did you say it was?” she asks.

((His eyes tapering—hideous like) (expressing dim
displeasure.))

“Seems I’d said something wrong?” barked the woman.
Said the demon, in a hoarse like voice, “Can’t you
try to concentrate?”
“You bore me to tears,” murmured the demon lover.


II.

The demon, bobbling his head up and down,
back and forth, doing a double-take on that note,
says (with a solid firm tone to his voice)
“What did you say?”

(The lover is fixing her hair, painting her claws;
overlooking his statement, for the moment.)

“I told you already,” she says (bright eyed), you
should have written it down.”
The demon (a noble aesthete) “We never pass out
we just keep going on and on…!”
“I bet,” says the lover, “you think your endurance
is impressive? That’s particularly silly, when you’re a
dead duck! You boast too much, and lay about like
a tank, roll under the table, where you belong.”

“I’m going to the theater,” says the lover.
“Why?” says the demon.
“Here I can’t do any deep thinking! Plus you need
to learn the thing you’re making love to is a woman!”
“My god,” says the demon “is that what it is.”
“I’m tired of you,” she tells the demon, annoyingly.


The demon, as though talking to him, himself that is,
says: “I think after the next round, I’ll go to a musical
comedy.”
“I heard that,” said the lover, “that is your kind of
intellectual libretto.”

Now you could hear the demon groan and grunt,
“You are,” said the demon lover, “a dull meaningless
figure in a dull meaningless world.”


III.

The Demon: “Sex isn’t dull!”
“In itself it is,” she explains, “it does although, make
life more playful!”
The Demon: “Good show baby, you love it!”
“On the contrary,” says the lover, “it’s a lot of work
especially for me with you! You give it a purpose,
otherwise it couldn’t stand on its own.”

“Well,” said the demon, inhaling the unpleasant
atmosphere “in any case, I’m a pragmatist and so
grant a poor demon a… a little you know what?
Matter-of-fact, if everyone believed in what you
say, we’d be out of business.”

“I suppose so,” said the demon lover, “and to anguish
with conventional morality, we’re all borderline heretics anyhow, and you think you’re so sophisticated.
We don’t need demons to teach us this
rot, if anything, it’s our gift to you…!”
“How can that be, I don’t even know what that all
means,” said the demon.
“If only people really knew, how dumb you really are,
they’d not put so much value in your, demur.”


(Here then, came a knock on the apartment door, the tickets arrived for the musical and cinema theaters, and who know what might have gone on, and been said, had they not arrived.)


1-23-2009 (No: 2557)

A Curious Afternoon in Tijuana, Mexico ((1969)(the Whorehouse))

A Curious Afternoon in
Tijuana, Mexico (1969)



At 1:30 p.m., Chick Evens is sitting with a close friend, his amigo, Mick Gunderson, at a common bar, in Tijuana, Mexico, drinking down a heavy, almost syrup like Mexican beer; it is the first time for both of them to be in Mexico, and Chick is exceptionally watchful, his eyes are if not imposing, near to it, everyone can see him, the red head, with sharp blue eyes, ‘…the gringo…’ someone mumbles at the other end of the bar. His dried out, protracted blinking eyes, hurting from the bright sun; he rubs them, as if trying to readjust them in the low lit tavern.
He is with a man he considers his best friend, and who is a friend of his brother’s, whom he is visiting in Montclair, California, and who will be accompanying him back to Minnesota.
During Evens’ time in San Francisco, at the karate dojo, he was considered a top contender for the next belt, the Black Belt, being the most original with his karate style, quick and deadly.

•

They are glad to see one another, it’s been over a year, when Chick moved to San Francisco, at which time, so did his brother and his wife, along with Mick move to Southern California, they are all from the same old neighbourhood back in St. Paul, Minnesota, Cayuga Street.
Thus, their eyes are full of kindness for the most part, both feeling effect of novelty, after the long separation. They finish the beer, relax a bit on the bar stool.
The Mexican bartender, behind the bar, is purring behind that smirk, as his catlike face checks out the redheaded gringo. Check nervously and restlessly senses it, there is not much conversation between Mick and Chick, so Mick suggests,
“Let’s go check out the whores?”
Chick: Sure! (Impatiently.)

(Outside the bar walking around)

Mick: You’d think the whores would be walking about, trying to get customers.
Chick: Look at the man over there (to his right, he points) his cart fell over; he’s picking up his food from the ground, tacos or is that a tamal cart, whatever…!
(They both laugh.)
Mick: sure is hot!
Chick: Over there, look over there (he points to the far left) that girl she’s waving at us (a dark-haired, Mexican girl about nineteen, with a short black skirt on, looking pleasantly at them both)
Mick: Yes, it’s us she’s looking at, let’s see what she cost. (They both walk slowly over to her; it is about two-hundred feet away.)
Mick: No speak Spanish, I hope you speak English?
Chick: How much will it cost for sex?
Girl: Ten-dollars for you señor…
Mick: Sounds like the right price! Ok, where do we do it?
Chick: Me, too!
Girl: Of course, honey! (Chick and Mick both look at each other as if to say: what are we getting ourselves into?)
Girl: You go señor into that room over there and your friend (Mick) he comes with me.

They had walked down an alley, and in the back was four three story brick buildings, and a low, one story wooden structure built up against a wall, with several enclosed rooms, there was out in the front, within this enclosure area, a dirt like empty lot, mysterious to say the least, thought Chick. And they both went into the two separate rooms, individually, and separated from one another.
Just prior to Chick’s entering the green door, to the one room, with only a bed it, which stood in the centre of the room, up against the wall, a chair to one corner of the bed to put his close on, and a skimpy looking rug, for a lone moment, it was a thought, that this was all stimulating, exciting, just the process of doing it, not the sex he thought he was going to get, but the building up to it, the development: there was something breathless about such an unknown moment, like abruptly going up a hill on a rollercoaster, and knowing in a moment you will be going down at a hundred miles per hour.

•

As chick waited in his room, a different girl came in, smiled, said, “Take off your close señor, I’ll be back in a minute.” And then she left, accordingly, he took off his trousers, and his shirt, now standing and waiting for the girl with only his under shorts on and his socks. At this point, he sensed there was more to this than meets the eye. And he would be right. For it was just a matter of minutes between the girl leaving and a knock on the door, and three He-men, Mexicans, with guns came in…

Ten minutes later

There they sat, Mick and Chick, a few blocks away from that so called Green painted wooden whorehouse, telling each other their stories, vowing to each other they’d never do that again (with a tinge of laughter in-between every few syllables).
Both had been robbed by the three armed he-men, but Chick had his money hid in his socks, $300.00 dollars to be exact. And there he stood almost naked with the three gangsters, guns loaded, as they asked, “More money, where is your money?”
He had told them, he only had change, he had paid the girl the ten dollars, and only change left, didn’t need anymore, because he was going back home. Mick on the other had, had $40-dollars left, an that was his contribution.
If there was to be any satisfaction out of this episode, it was that Chick got a measure of superiority on that side of the fence, that he outsmarted the Mexicans, who had ambushed them.

Written at Starbucks, In Lima Peru, 1-22-2009

The Portrait of W.S. ((Raison d'être) (reason to be))

((Raison d'être) (reason to be))

The Portrait of W.S.


Chapter One

You could barely at times, during the onset, stand the crying, the noise the razor-strip made across his back, I speak of those who could hear the slashing and echo the thin leather strip strap made; it was made for sharpening a razor not for whippings. Those in the extended family, learned to acquire deaf ears while the old man was in his mood, the neighbors in the summer with their windows down, open to the air, could hear, they also learned to tolerate the ongoing affair, calling it a ‘slight disturbance’; perhaps the truth, the whole truth, was, they were getting accustomed to it, thus in such a process one minimizes, if not completely putting it into a dead chamber of ones mind—you know what I mean, the old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” Something likes that. No one knew what the reasons were for his beatings, why he battered with the razor strap W.S., perhaps not even the old man knew why he did, what he did, nonetheless, he did it.
His wife, the old man’s wife, W.S. ’s mother, had been dead now for some years, double pneumonia—the Minnesota winters can be hard on ones body, and it was on her’s—she gave the old man eight children to raise though, perchance that played a role in why the old man chose W.S., to take out his frustrations on; sometimes we do that, pick out a certain individual, person—save we don’t take it out on all—to displace our anger (and yes, anger can come out sideways, if it is not directed toward the reason and person one is angry at, in many ways, as I mentioned before, frustration being a lighter form of anger, like trying to push a door open and someone is behind it as a counter weight pushing it in the opposite direction, thus comes the anger, the frustration the irritation in life, it comes from not being able to open the door), and now that his wife was dead, his help mate, and not being able to speak English well, being from Russia, and having the children at hand, working two jobs, W.S., was his release.
In the cellar, where he kept his pigeons, he raised a horde of them, that is where he took W.S., quietly down a wooden flight of stairs, pulling him by one ear, stretching it out as if he wanted to pull it off, yet he didn’t allow himself the pleasure, lest he be considered inhuman, a beast, and he assured himself that—he was not.
He had him lay over the edge of a table, shirt off, pants down, and he whipped him, upper legs, buttocks, lower and upper back and across the spine, up to his lower part of his shoulders, but not on exposed areas, only areas that he would cover up later with his cloths.
The rhythm of the leather razor strip, rapidity went smoothly across those exposed areas, almost spaced perfectly in time, as if he was playing a piano in 4/4 time, from one to the next hack, as if he had it tuned perfectly, that being his arms reached the proper distance with the wave of the strap, and the slap of it on flesh, to produce little red marks, on his pink flesh, but not cutting him. He endured these beatings several times a year, for years…


(Interlude) We look for reasons why people do what they do, sometimes, when we can’t find them, it simply comes under, reason to being, a motive for existence. Perhaps the old man knew, things give in, fall apart, and he could (as in his homeland of Russia), they always have, like the falling stars, the shooting astounds in the night sky, fall, never to be seen again (he was sending money home to his mother, now in Warsaw, and he’d never see her again, and his father who fell off a roof in Russia, he’d never return) possibly he felt he was in a strange sea, and if he stopped doing what he was doing, he’d fall off that same roof, or disappear like the asteroids, the falling stars, he was as if sanding under a lit lantern, tied to a mast, and forgot what happiness was, and when things don’t work out as you plan, where was he to go, he didn’t read, study the news per se, he didn’t drink much, he couldn’t go back home, to Russia, had he done that, it would have been like jumping back into the depths of the sea. Consequently, W.S., was his discharge, his savior, his way to get back to sanity.

and he who beat the strap so cunningly, from years of practice now, being 82-years old, looked everyday of his age. His legs were beginning to become wobbly, unbalanced, and weak in strength and endurance. His thin straight hair, lay flat on his balding head, and his dark eyebrows, once bushy, now were thinning out, like loose threads, just lying dormant almost to his eyelashes, with no flexibility to bring them back up to life. His forehead extended backwards, as if it was a receding glacier, unrelenting and soon to be completely balled. His eyes were being pushed back farther into his eye-sockets, and the sockets were deeper and wider than they had ever been, almost as if they were tapped onto the skull itself by a hammer—, spot-welded on for survival sake, like a tapered pair of pants, then ironed onto the skull. His eyes had dark pinholes for irises, thinner than a ghost’s mist. He was shockingly cadaverous looking in posture and looks.
W.S., didn’t know his father’s daytime hopes and aspirations, other than they were most likely connected to his insomnia, and for each person, it is different, it comes in essence, in a different package, not sure if any one person knows the other person that well to figure out that package but between he and his father it was an ever widening interval, and perhaps his troubles commenced with the war, scarcely did he talk about it, and when he did, he got deeply engrossed, as if awakened from or into a nightmare, pin-pricked in the finger (often times we think we know the other person, only to find out later one, we have simple reviewed our own personal suspicions of the other person, something W.S., never did), and those nights, the ones where prior that day he talked about the war, he, W.S., would end up usually,
flipping on the bedroom light, as his father would be uttering something (something haunting), and a wild scream would follow, as if he was charging, devouring the man in front of him, and after that he was very, very tired, and W.S., would walk him back to his bed, in the morning never knowing a thing about anything the previous night, he though, the old man thought, he was in a total sleep, never figuring out, the intermittent horrors—of his sleep-walking; such an undertaking, interlocking circumstance, for W.S., yet, they generally seemed thin to him, diminished in force and urgency, and viewed in his mind more as a coincident for a lighter subject: conceivably more on the order of ills of an old man’s functioning body.
On the other hand, W.S., was sympathetic to his father’s ill and eternal quivering in the bed, trying to get to sleep, again imagining but not quite honoring his imagination for realism, he thought the war might have stayed with him, the Civil War, and those great battles he talked about, to the point of bringing him to the edge of an abyss, and should he fall face first, forward and viciously down into that abyss, an endless grimy tragedy was waiting, he saw his demons there, singing him a lullaby, and their only wish was to enfold him into their nightmare.

But the old man was aging, his skin starting to sag; forearms were forming lasting wrinkles, muscle tone deflated, and the muscles knotting up from lack of use, and over use, and outstretched skin. And those once thick Russian bones were now bending, he lost height, none that he could really afford to lose, he was only five-footed two inches tall to begin with. Even his silver watch, around his wrist left a thick impression in his flesh when he took it off at night, twice as deep as it was a few years back, and the watch, was dulling as was his skin tone.
“Oh yes,” he yelped, as he punished rapidly with his descending whip and thrust of the strap on the back of W.S., muttered something (with the eyes of five-thousand hungry dogs) and the old man said,
“Oh no, I know you did!”
Ah, W.S., muttered something back, and the old man said,
“Oh no, I know you did,” and caught his breath, then added “I’ll take the devil out of you yet!”
But W.S., would not disclose his sisters name, the one he did this and that with, his so called sidekick, and had he disclosed here name, I doubt, the old man would have done anything about it anyhow, he would have blamed W.S., for leading her astray; thus, whipping him more, and at the same time, wiping her soul clean, sanctifying her by proxy. Sometimes W.S., and his sister, the third of the eight in age, would run off and into the city, returning late, or not returning until the next day—this was a peeve with the old man, amongst other things.




Chapter Two

The old man cursed worse than a dying warlock, he had a hard time with the English language, but not with the English cursing words. It was as if some evil spirit cast a spell upon him, during his voyage over from Europe, to New York City.
The old man had run away from home when he was only ten-years old, a stowaway on a ship, it was 1864, when he arrived in the United States, and somehow found himself in a war between the states at eleven years old. Thereafter, in 1866, he found his way to St. Paul, Minnesota, along the Mississippi, making his way up from New Orleans and St. Louis. What happened in-between, was all hearsay, the old man was never that coherent to put the pieces back together for anyone to create a complete and finished story out of those years.
But getting back to W.S., he simply endured like a dutiful and proud son he was, from a stock of Russian and Polish descendents, his grandmother being of that second order.


The father, the old man that is, shameless in his degraded anger, buried a lovely and church going wife, a woman of some breeding, a second wife that is, he had ridded himself of a previous wife, whom he had no children with, and was only married a short time to in comparison to his second wife, whom the first was nothing less than a drunk. He had kicked her out of the house, and went looking for a new one; almost as if it was a commodity he was looking for.
After his wife had died, he had gathered most of her things, so many things, of fifteen years of buying, and therefore he had only the things around him he was fond of, which was to the old man very edifying, a black mantle clock, a picture of him and his wife by the clock in the living room, and in his bedroom a medal from the Army he was given. He had very few impressive photographs of old, but the one he had, he’d look at very preciously, of course at this point and time, it was late in life for him. Hidden in his sofa chair W.S., had found one some pornographic black and white pictures, photographs of a young woman, she looked familiar, from up the block, W.S., put them back in the same location, it was a shame he thought, he had even found them. He looked already as a man on his death bed, yet he’d live longer, W.S., knew this and was hopeful he did, such folks always do, it seems, it is as if God himself, is giving them an extra chance to repent. He had kindness in him, otherwise he’d not have raised eight kids, save for it was simply kindness stretched out ineffectual. All in all, he had the good taste, not to marry a third time, lest he endure more frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction, and that would just not do.
The woes of so many people, in his life haunted him—W.S., was sure of that, from Russia to the Civil War, to his first drunken wife, and then onto his beautiful beloved second wife, and her death, as if this was some theatrical introduction to a classic drama to be played out on state, so W.S., often would ponder on, undertook to reissue his old thoughts and collect his new ones. He was always trying to figure out what made the old man tick.

•

There was at this time, the neighbours who honourable stood by staring out their windows, laughing at the cries of the boy, as if ready to applaud, if only they had an actual eyeful of the subdued in their mist. This was never on his mind though, the old man was many things, but he was not trying to feed the pleasures of others, but most frequently did, in his underground hush-hush, and these cries were of course prior to the boy’s teens, once he reached the adolescent state, he never cried again, matte of fact, he was taller than the old man, and stronger.
Oh yes, W.S., endured and even murmured to his father as he was being beat on his 15th birthday, the old man breathless,
“Take me to the shed pa, so the neighbour’s won’t hear and say bad things about you.”
But the old man never paused to listen, and therefore, the beatings remained in the cellar.
W.S., made no attempts to run away, not for good anyhow, he and his sister E.S., were tied together like Amos and Andy on the Radio broadcast they had weekly, they were sidekicks, sort of, but too often this gave the old man more reason to beat W.S., to punish him, to slash him with the leather strap, and listen to the blows, but now with no tears, or cries, silent was his victim, and accordingly, much of the pleasure dissolved.

About this time, 1940, the boy being seventeen-years old now, the old man asked W.S., “Vhy yo no cry?” (The old man now 93-years old)
The old man was exhausted from giving W.S., a beating, he even dropped the leather strap to the floor, his fingers stiff, didn’t even feel the leather fall out of his grips. He then caught his breath back, shook his head.
“It doesn’t hurt that much any more father,” said W.S., the old man had lost his strength, his ability to put that much force into the wave of the leather strap, and half the slashes, hit the table, not the boy, his aim was off, his balance was terrible, he almost fell on top of the boy.

This day, the old man stood stone-still, looked about, he was disorientated, couldn’t figure out exactly where he was. So much anger, so much death in the back of his head, swollen skies, not much life, he murmured, “…everythin’ goin’ to hell…!”
He was dizzy; his head felt like it was crashing, like thunder falling from eardrum to eardrum. W.S., helped his father to sit down in a chair nearby, then halfway down—bending his knees, he stood straight up, pushed the chair away from him, now regaining his strength.

The boy, if anything was very proud of his father, proud he had fought in the Civil War, to him a hero, and W.S., being the last, and youngest of the eight children, born in 1923, having missed the great War, told his father, “Pa, I’m going to enlist in the Army, I want to fight in this new war in Europe.”
That was the last of his beatings that day, he’d never get another.
The boy smiled when he told his father his ambition, and for the first time in his life, he smiled back. Matter of fact, he would comment to his neighbours in due time, of his boys intentions which would be reality in a matter of month.

As W.S., stood there, waiting to get a second beating, thinking his father was going to give him a second beating, now that he had his strength back, and especially for talking back to him, the old man simply turned about, walked quietly up the old wooden stairs, mumbling and swearing, but proudly this time.


Chapter Three


The boy knew, it was hard for his father to live amongst the herd (society), where there was more wolves than lambs—and his communicational skills were dull at best, and that the wolves get hungry and have to eat, and we cannot stray too far off, lest, finding the lambs may eat us also. He had no special gospel to teach his children such things, or the words, he knew they had to learn this on their own, let us assume, he didn’t like it, or half didn’t like it, having to teach them, having no teaching skills, and if the leather strap helped teach W.S., how terrible his father could be, then how bad could the wolves be, or even the lambs. He was somewhat relieved when he was told W.S., was going into the Army, this would be his teacher.
For himself, he was a man wrapped up some, with domestic rats, his ways were cut from an old carpet you might say, and in a few months his boy would be gone. “How strange,” he mumbled as he often did, “I didn’t suspect it,” he uttered to the mirror as he walked by his black mantle clock, looking at Ella, his wife; seeing how old and ugly he had turned into, all those 90-plus years weighing on him.
Once there was a whole lot of him, by and by it disappeared, like his sleep was doing, if anything, to want for sleep, and not have it, and to be in bed, and sleep not, was his worse curse you might say.
He loved Ella, she was the only perfectly respectable girl in his life, no matter how long she lived, she would never leave his mind, well I suppose it isn’t quite true, Oh-h-h! he found that one young girl, some thirty-years younger than he, up the block, the one W.S., found the photos of, and he W.S., had talked once to the girl, visited her one afternoon, who introduced him to her three children, and when he left, she said in passing, quietly,
“Your father bought me this house, and these children, belong to him.”
He never mentioned it to anyone, it was as if he got slapped in the face, but then each man must live his own life.
She had said to him, as he sat in the kitchen listening to her,
“I’m giving a dinner tonight, I want you to come.”
But he refused, nicely. Not so much because he wanted to, nor was he trying to be rude, he just felt out of place,
“Look me up in the future,” she said. But he never would.

•

That summer was a hot moist summer, 1940, the air with gossiping with mosquitoes, and the mosquitoes were attacking every living thing, and the thunderstorms brought bitterness to two cities, of St. Paul, and Minneapolis, destroying homes in the countryside, and folks slept outside on the grass it got so hot, foreheads sweating, people dying of heatstroke, it was the summer W.S., would join the Army.
If W.S., was angry at his father, it was because he would not let him love him, nothing else, matter of fact, E.S., often asked,
“Why aren’t you a bit heated at father, I don’t understand, he never treated you fairly?”
He couldn’t answer that question, he didn’t know the answer, but E.S., understood, with his staring eyes of forgiveness; to E.S., it was like the old man poured black rain on him, and the more he poured the more bright he became, he wanted if anything, W.S., wanted for his father that is, happiness, something he lost along the way of life.
E.S., was no longer a woman servant either, as many were in those far-off wondrous days, she had worked for four-years as a servant (as her other sisters had off and on) in a household, living at home when she could, and staying in the master’s household, with their children, and cleaning, and so forth, when they needed her, she had been paid very little, but was fed, and clothed, and that helped her father out.
Now she was going to go work for the munitions plant, they were hiring. Thus, things were chaining for all.
In the old man’s household, there was neither frost nor famine, per se, he was a hard worker, a painter of houses, buildings, and half owned a restaurant on Wabasha Street, in St. Paul, there he made his Russian stews, and so forth. His job paid him well, and he took on some side jobs, that paid him cash in silver dollars. And he worked up to the last three years of his life.
This was indeed a changing summer for everyone, for E.S., and his sidekick sister, E.S., and the oldest sister had gotten married, Ann, and even for the old man, he was making more money from the restaurant than he expected, and now on Social Security, as he must have thought, ‘why now, why at the end of my life do I get what I really don’t need, success, I should have got it back when…?’
And it came to pass, W.S., departed for the Army, and would spend most of his time near and at the end of the war, in Florence, Italy.



Chapter Four

No matter which way one thinks of it, W.S., had inherited from someone, perhaps his mother, the character in large degree, namely, patience, call it a virtue. Having said that, he received in the five-years he was in the military, or near five-years, the rank of Sergeant. By and large, he was a sharp trooper, and all who knew him liked him, he was the driver for a Colonial.
On occasion, he conservatively sent home some money to help feed the extended family, his father now slightly ill, and unable to work at his restaurant.

The war was a pale mooned war, for W.S., he dreamed on, and of the summer he had with is family, that being, 1940, the one he had spent with his sisters, and father. It was the summer he was treated as an equal by his father, or at least, he put a light in his eye.
On the other hand, the war grew faint the first few years, it would sweep over though…and he’d find some shade by a tree in the afternoons, and dream about going home with his uniform on, and standing proudly by his father, as if to be among men, gods and ghosts.
During the last days of the war, he got to see the gorgeous Vatican, sharp against the night light of the moon; he listened to the organs tremble during the day, and loitered through the corridors thereafter.
From the moment when, as a young boy, handsome, he’d gaze out of his bedroom window into the imaginary future, as if he had an audience, watching his progress, he imagined he was in some kind of accidental glamorous life, and it was just that now, he felt he was almost a star, in the cinema, but he wanted to go home and see his pa, that took precedence.

•

Upon W.S.’s return home from the war, 1945, he found his father in his sofa chair dead, neck stretched and head lying against the back of the chair.
W.S., stood in shock, his mouth open, wide open, his uniform on, his brass shinned, his heart pressing against the walls of his inner being, he gasped for air—he noticed he was thin, too thin, but no pain on his face, he was 98-years old, he held a letter in his right hand, which laid across his lap, it had the insignia of the Army on it, he had received it a few hours earlier, it was now 11:00 a.m., June 16, 1945.
W.S., felt his father’s arms, his blood was still warm, he took the letter, it had his name on it, he seen from the side of his eye, at a glace, as he scanned his father’s body, tears rolling down his cheeks as if a lock from the Panama Canal had been opened, and a flood of water was being released, he saw the part of the letter that read, “…killed in action, in Italy, May 29, 1945.”
Today would be the second time in W.S.’s life he’d notice a smile on his father’s face. A withered smile, but a smile nonetheless.
‘God had been kind,’ murmured, W.S., he died with little to no pain, and he died thinking his son was a hero, like him; that was the happiness he could not give him directly, but somehow his father got it indirectly. For once in his life, he pleased his father; and if there was anything analogous to this, it was just that, the letter indicated he died in some great battle, likened to the ones he must have saw, and maybe even partook in, he was quite young in the Civil War years.
Had he knew, the old man known, W.S., was a Colonel’s driver, things might not have been so spectacular for the old man, at that vital moment, he might have died from a heart attack because his son was no more than a driver. Even if it wasn’t true, and it wasn’t true indeed, W.S., was no hero of that sort, although, had he been given the chance, he may have been: in any case, he filled his father’s expectations, by another man’s death.


Written throughout the day, 12-20-2009, Lima, Peru

Siluk Horror writer: Bram Stoaker Award (2009)

Siluk: Bram Stoker Award

Announcing the Horror Stories and books by
Dr. Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.

Under consideration for the Bram Stoker Award

For best short fiction collection, 2009

See his horror books: the Tiamat trilogy, series, plus several short story horror books, “Death on Demand” (to include the renowned story, “The Rape Angelina of Glastonbury, AD 119” read by many of his 150,000-monthly readers) (and: “The Seventy Born Son”); “Dracula’s Ghost,” has eight trying stories, and “The Tale of the Jumping Serpents of Bosnia, another Colleton of eldritch short fiction (to include the growing interest in “Night Ride to Huancayo” a horrific supernatural tale). Also, the psychological thriller, “The Mumbler,” and “Manticore, Day of the Beast” And his book on visions “The Last Trumpet…” and “Angelic Renegades…” he is the unknown crown horror writer of the decade. Also see “After Eve” [a book of historic adventure].

His books can be seen on Amazon.com; B&N.com; abe.com and all the other internet big and small book dealers.

For those interested in the readings of Mr. Siluk’s books, he invites you to email the following:


stokerjury@horror.org stokerjury@horror.org
admin@horror.org

See Reviews by Benjamin Szumskyj on Dennis L. Siluk (and visit his many websites http:// dennissiluk.tripod.com


BENJAMIN SZUMSKYJ is a qualified teacher (Bachelor of Arts in Education / Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences, minor in English) at a private high school. He also has a diploma as a librarian technician/assistant and a graduate diploma in Christian Studies. Szumskyj also acted as convener on the horror panel of the 2005 Aurealis Awards. In addition to being a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association, he is also a member of the (American) Horror Writers Association. His blog can be found at SSWFT, which is updated irregularly.



"In the Pits of Hell, a Seed of Faith Grows" - a review of The Macabre Poems: and Other Selected Poems (Volume III) by Dennis L. Siluk for Calenture: a Journal of Studies in Speculative Verse (Volume 1 # 1: September 2005).


"Interview with Dennis L. Siluk," for Lost Sanctum #2 (Wild Cat Books, 2006).


“He Is What He Writes: The Weird Tales of Dennis L. Siluk" for Dissections: The Journal of Contemporary Horror #2

(http://www.simegen.com/writers/dissections/February%202008/dissections_page_06.html>, 2008).

The Days (Tribute to Juan parra del Riego)

I

All year, knowing you’re dead,
I’ve sat in two hard-pillowed chairs,
Looking out the windows, being sad
With human melancholy, trying to restart
Those days in which you lived your poetry—
(in translating, editing, and selecting your best),
Days when your youth like mine, felt the sun
Carried ambition, from earth to sky,
Ominous days, with inspiration to share;
I live them now, but feel yours in death.

II

Today, is like any day, I suppose
As you once knew, expected death,
As I do now. The sky is overcast,
(I hear the shuddering rain, the splash
As cars drive by, their engines alive)—
And in the dash, like a river off-course, now
This is my moment when air
Being most full of life and images,
Appears lifeless, no motion, now:
Land, river and sky, we merge, the
Splash is gone. And so is my sadness.
Everything is drowned out of me, but you
(so I can write this poetic tribute).
My memories emerge (with them), I’ve found
The days you lived, the key to your poetry;
The secret closet you hid as a poet.

III

I think of all you did, when you lived
(That is, all you wrote, and might have wrote
And done before death undid you…despair)
There was much promise in your youthful
Years--your wild reserve, the color of autumn leaves
In your Face, inspiring the wind, and woods
And the bare silence in the hummingbirds.

None had such promise then, not even
Cesar Vallejo, or Borges, not even Yeats,
Or Keats, Georg Trakl, or Pablo Neruda.
Your rhythm and rhyme, scapegrace charm,
Pattern and structure of sound, verse and meter,
Accentual-syllabic line, all gave motion
As if glazed in rain, falling hard to soft…with
Disarming grace, yes, oh yes, you were bold,
As Homer, building a wooden horse
To Deceive and then destroy Troy!
In the Age of Symbolism and Modernism.

It was, was it not, in your luckless blood?
That failure came only because all passion
Was taken away in mid-course? By Death!
You shrank to nothingness, but still you
Wrote your poetry, an hour before your death!
You lived beyond the gloomy boredom of regret.
You did not deject any love, the beat of your heart,
Was for Blanca Luz Brum, no cold fortune…

Your slow death, shaped your stare upon life
There was blood within that sightless stare,
But it made you one, made you look and wrote
Your poetry in stone, at the end, alone…

IV

Your poetry has outlived you, and that sightless stare.
Your poetry Parra, has outlive that boat you rowed—
So long ago, in Montevideo and it will
Out live the painting that hung in your room
Where you sat by a table— the ultimate last hours
Before your death (with Blanca Luz and an amigo)…

I see the grief upon her youthful face, drunk
With loss, seeking some oblivious place, to hid in
Desolation, despondency, mouth open as if in horror,
Eyes staring, for the haunted hour is near, harrowing
Face, full of disgrace…for being helpless!
She holds hard onto her chair, legs half crossed,
Breathing slowly, she knows soon, what she must endure.

V

Blanca and Juan’s amigo, stood by him the hour
Of his humiliation, yet he did not turn upon them
In the last hours of the night—they in a sad self-
Loathing, Juan, concealing nothing,
He heard Blanch cry, “I am lost. But you are worse!”
Perhaps the dying do not own to their dominance.
But this night, the lights were lowered,
It was the later hour,
And then the lights went out,

then the dissipation of the night passed…

Everybody worn-out, utter destitution
And the two now knew, the world deprived!

VI

Knowing, and having heard, read the bare fact
Of your death, the word lingers in my head--
Death in that haughty room,
Shut tight, from sky and cloud,
Only silent thoughts, cast from
Moment to moment, to illume later on
With those loved ones by your side
...

The hours you and I have now known,
Even though you’ve been dead over eighty-years,
Neither denounces my poem, tribute for you,
Nor pardons, my words, if they offend…
Like you, I have seen the moon’s light, glide
Upon, and over the sea’s tide, and the waves
Lost on the sandy shore, as they recede never
To succumb to them even when the dark has come;
I hope I am strong as you (when my death comes),
Although I cannot promise what I cannot give…

and now to your Surpassed fame, O’dark!
you have turned into light!


Written 12-24-2008 (Morning); Huancayo, Peru, No: 2533

Voyage of the Confucius Priest (Short Story, Revised)

Voyage
Of the Confucius Priest
(A Short History of the Augusto Peñaloza family)



The Voyage

An hour after dark, when the seven young men, no older than 19-years of age (including the young Confucius, temple priest, Yang, whom was broad at the shoulders, narrow eyes, perhaps five-foot eight inches all, one-hundred and forty-pounds, short dark hair, deep dark colored eyes, flat at the stomach, and short neck, rounded chin, straight nose, his skin more bronze than fair to pale) squatting down, each carrying a light blanket, Yang with a lit lantern in addition. (It was Saturday night. They just said their prayers in the temple, heard the foot-steps of the night watchman go by, and watched him from the temple window climb up the ladder, as he checked the rooftops of the houses, then they didn’t see him anymore, thus, the other six poured themselves some rice wine, drank it down hurriedly, to settle their nerves, Yang, pulled out a coin from his pocket, the wooden floor below his feet made a cracking sound as he moved them, interrupted the other six young men, “Three minutes,” a voice said, “and the guard will take his ten-minute break,” a break he was allowed to use for eating, “we’ll go then,” continued the voice.
As a result, all seven were compelled to wait, as they silently, disclaimed China’s ownership of them, then up some stairs they went, to a trap door that led out onto the roof of the temple, climbed along its edge, descended beyond the fortress walls, squatting against the wall and with no sound save the steady movement of feet, they made their way to the Yangtze River. There inside the boat called a ‘Junk’, they sailed, and ten hours later—suddenly—the first appearance since the seven had vanished, the captain of the boat, threw water on the stinking seven, to clean them, several buckets of cold November water. The owner of the boat just looked at them, like he had never seen them before, it was more than that, and it was like he never wanted to remember them once they were gone.
They had no money to speak of (especially for passage), and so payment would be, to allow the owner to sell them into slavery.
From the belly of the Junk below, the men themselves could not hear or listen to what was happening on the upper level, the only other level of the vessel, hence, everything remained unchanged within the bowels of the Junk, dirtier than a fox’s hole, and as dark, though not as demanding and punishing as their previous lives would have seen. The cheap imitation of freedom, bagged up in the jackets of the appointed men in charge of the providence, the fortress, the temple, life could be no worse as a slave.
Squatting on the ship’s floor, beneath the galley above (this was 1869, Yang now 19-years old, an odd year, all the young men had been defeated and forgotten, what would be the difference—so they felt—to belong to the lowest bidder in Argentina, Buenos Aires (by way of Ushuaia), where the next ship would take them, merely a like candidate for freedom someday, which was all that they hoped for, a chance, outside of a dotting country of dictators, away from fences they could not go behind, and bridges they could not cross, and flanks they were forbidden to go near, they were just fading leaves on tress—to be incriminated at any time by the wealthy, empowered, given warnings: with no head to their pleas and cries.)

There they were, just squatting (thinking about their servitude to be, the voyage, what they had gone through, the escape itself came back to their minds, the bequeath of freedom, Yang gave to them, handed down to them, something they’d all forget in a moment time for a long, very long time, but for some it would resurface), not doing nothing, not a thing but thinking, nobody bothering them, until the ship stopped, and they boarded the second ship, and then, there they were near a month at sea, and another benediction: whereupon they were awoken from their sleep, from the straw thick floor, used as their living quarters, where they ate, and drank out of water buckets, had one blanket each, and had one lantern between them, it was Sunday morning—and all their dreaming and all their thinking faded.


To the Bequeathed
(Remember while on the Ship, and about to disembark)

Before the night watchmen had finished with his evening meal, Yang and his followers, comrades were gone, yet quick as they left that morning, so affected the whole temple site, as well as the nearby village, most knew by mid-afternoon, all knew by sundown—every inlet and penniless village, the region knew the young priest, the king-priest to be, disappeared, was out of sight.
The officials had only to wait (so they thought), and he’d return, hence, to bide until that delivery moment, so they claimed. He had been running away mainly because of being unveiled as a heretic, that what he preached was not the true side of religion that his building was full of sacrilegious figures, and therefore he feared for his life.

It was asked among his followers, “What did he see, as he stood gazing so many nights out his temple windows…?”
It was said he saw the future, the near future, that a vision appeared to him, of soldiers coming breaking down the temple, the idols, ripping down the tapestry, he saw a new China on the rise, and he knew he would have to escape, lest he be tortured and killed (so he re-dreamed as he sat on the floor of the vessel, dreamed on his trip down the Yangtze River, toward Shanghai, to board another ship, that would take them out of China, into the waters of the Pacific).
Looking out that temple window, he heard a voice; it even seemed to smile as it wept: “Do not put your trust into man, but let him trust you, he is inconsistent, as the waves you will be on soon, a fugitive of God, he remains, this is the course of most men, the cling to wealth, squeeze out the life sap of the seeker—be him poet, priest, or philosopher—the sap of the soul, like a juicy plant, and they leave it rot once its life substance is gone.
“The good rulers do not war against nor punish his country men, as if they were the common enemy, who punishes for lack of opportunity: he, the bad ruler is responsible and thus, sets the trap for his people.”

(So many things he thought in those hours and days at sea.) It was in those days in China, he saw tourists flock into its country from India and Europe, Buddhist Monks arrived in great numbers, and had its share of Missionaries preaching Zoroastrianism, Christianity, yet, Yang remained as an Confucian. And along with his followers, Li, Ming, Ho, and the others, gazed out the windows of the temple, gazed at the Great White Star (Venus), and in the evenings, under candle light, read the books of Confucius.
And he wrote on the temple wall before he left, “How many times must China die and reborn before she finds order and peace, for now all she offers is chaos and balances herself with dictatorships.”




Counting the Cost
Argentina and the Farm


(In 1870, Yang was sold the Peñaloza Family, Buenos Aires, whereupon he inherited their name, and was given a first name, according to Latin American soundings, now called Manuel Peñaloza--the year being 1870. Because of trouble and strife, and the Peñaloza family, being in politics, and the son being killed for his beliefs, the head of the household of the Peñaloza family, being superstitious, and feeling Manuel gave them bad luck, he was set free, in 1888: thereafter marrying Nieves, in 1889)


The two folks, Yang (now Manuel Peñaloza) and his wife Nieves, could hardly support themselves, working on a farm outside of the city, likely not getting much more than their board and lodging, the family that was trying to live on the farm were also poor folks, thus, a childless couple, one of middle age, two of misfortune, drawn together as if by some mutual last resort, here they lived in a one room cabin, more like a kind of shed, clinging onto life, on a farm with a straggling one-hundred acres of corn, incredible to say the least, with its heart-breaking labor, this he come to acknowledge this life would not reward his sweat he was giving, but merely eat away at his flesh, a man who at one time was called the young king-priest, of the temple, a hero to his followers who for so long, walked in solitary and alone, yet he still shed a magnificent giant shadow.

But here they lived nonetheless, for near two years, splitting firewood, hoeing the hard and tilted ground, planting the corn resting on Sunday afternoons, in his clean but faded trousers; and to that they gave thanks for the strong heart they were give by God. This was the time he learned about Christianity, having checked the doctrine out, read the gospels, memorized the ten-commandments, he had learned during his bondage, the Spanish language, perhaps better than the average college bound Argentinean. And consequently, watched the people preach the word of God, and then violate them, then he was gone, it was 1891.


Killing Man’s Meat


(Manuel’s wife, gave birth to a male child in 1891, naming him Fidel) (The boy growing several inches shorter than his father, and growing a thin goatee at a young age. He took up carpentry, and in 1915, they all moved to Lima, Peru whereupon he married Juana, in 1919 (whom he met in Huancayo, Peru, where he bought lands and would stay for a lengthily period before moving back to Lima).


And so it was, Manuel and his wife, took their grown boy, Fidel, in the year, 1915, to Lima, Peru, had said a prayer for them the night before, and told Nieves: this was the last journey, now being, sixty-five years of age, for each journey was unto itself a battle.
“What,” his wife said, once in Lima, he had mumbled something to himself,
“It took me sixty-five years to get to where I might find freedom, I still have my Confucius roots, and now Christianity, it will be Christmas soon, we walked a long way, time to stop and find a job,” but what he didn’t say and wanted to say, perhaps was: I really know nothing but how to preach, although he had done several other things along his life’s journey, he’d ended up doing no trade, and there wasn’t any money except just what he needed to feed his family, to save ones meat from rotting, he went after ideals, and found words, and only a single coin in his pocket at the end of it, but he fed the family. When he was young he thought different, his aim was different, but not long after the voyage that all changed, now in Lima, a long journey he had learned only what was right and wrong, what was sin, the very things he knew before he left China, the very things he taught his son, the very things he went over and over and over, how man kills his own meat.

(In 1921, Augusto Peñaloza was born to Fidel, and in 1923, had a daughter, Christina. Fidel died in 1971. In 1957, Augusto’s wife, Maria, gave birth to Minerva and Rosa (Maria died in 2001); in 1959; Minerva, giving birth to Ximena, in 1993, and in 2007, the family found out, they were partly ChineseJ)






Notes: Taken from actual events. Names and dates are as close to the truth as the author can fix; some parts historical fiction; written from notes taken over a conversation between author and Augusto Peñaloza, 10-4-2008, at the café ‘Mia Mamma,’ in El Tambo, Huancayo, Peru. Copyright©2008, by Dennis L. Siluk

The Voyage, and Proceeding History, written, 10-4-2008; The Escape, The Vision, the Interlude, written 10-6-2008; Farming, Farming II, and Christ, Killing Man’s Meet, written, the morning of October 8, 2008.

Lost Souls in the Canyon of Pain (poetic Prose)

The Lost Souls, In the Canyon of Pain (Poetic Prose)

Uri’el, the archangel woke me up, within a dream, said “We’re going on a journey, to the see the lost souls, in the Canyon of Pain; and when we arrived I beheld a great fire, in this long canyon of sorts, that extended from sea to sea, where great rods of fire forced its way to and fro, burning with flames consuming all (all but Uri’el and me); it poured like lava:
there I met many long forgotten dictators and kings of my time, killers and traders of their own countries, such as Hugo Chavez, whom was with Fidel Castro, chumming along the ledge of some tall cliffs, with scores, open scabs pus bleeding from all four limbs, they tried to stop me, asking me if they’d been forgotten on earth, as if they were loved by their kind; sad to say, but they were ink blots, in old books, on old shelves, in old libraries, forgotten the day they died.
Then further down the canyon Uri’el flew me, hand in hand, straight as an arrow, until we came to the dryer part and sunken branch where there I beheld quicksand, and vipers who searched the top, to fight among the bobbing heads, and there was Ollanta Humala, Peru’s vulgar tongue. There they were will boils from the vipers’ bits, all over their heads.
Then further down, I saw the warlords of the near past, Pol Pot leading the lot, Sodom Hussein, from Iraq, Bin Laden, from Arabia, George W. Bush from the U.S.A., playing chess inside a cave, to find out which one got to smash the other’s head in, as a circle of rotting flesh, laid about them (and in that flesh, was a thousand names from the past: like Stalin, Hitler, kings and contemporary presidents of Africa, China, Georgia, and Russia, too many to mention).
Then I saw the rich and famous, burning like fall leaves in an iron barrow, large was the barrow, and scorched were they all; Julie Roberts was among them, and so was Sean Penn, and Madonna, each reaching out for the others hands; and there were a thousand more, singers and musicians, and among the most was the Great Pretenders, the actors, the menacing bunch: Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore, Morgan Freeman, Nicole Kidman, Sean Connery, Tim Robbins, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Russell Crowe, Randolph Scott, Jack Nicholson Ashley Judd and Pacino (to mention a few, all scorched souls, ruined by money and fame).
Then I woke up, and looked about, and in a vision I saw the heroes of the land, the sports arenas of the world as they appeared one by one, and children running to shake the hero’s hand, but all the sportsmen and woman were standing in a line, yelling and screaming, as the children stood by (they had no interest in portraying good sportsmanship, or immolating proper behavior for the new generation), and Pluto, the giant demon of hell, pulled them one by one into his grips, holding a hundred in two hands and then he dropped them into the canyon pit—then reached for another hundred or more, and the children screamed for their heroes now gone, and Pluto simply said, “I’m be waiting for you-all.”

Note: No: 2493 (written, 9-4-2008)

Birth of the Devil-goat (the complet five part story)(reedited 3/2008)

Birth of the Devil-Goat
(A Five Part Story)




Part I
Chapter One: the Birth

It was in a little lot of a farm, a piece of land outside of Cairo, Egypt, in the year 1998 that this happening too place, that a voice of a demon, a figure of a devil appeared through the skin of a goat, upon its birth, the old man shuddered at its appearance, his niece, who farmed the land with him, remained still, paused impressively as the birth took place, the old man demanded she kill the freaked creature quickly if not instantly, crying, "Kill, kill, kill the freak...!"
If one could hear, he would hear inside the tiny head of the creature, its voice humming a death song for the old man, a chant, as it lay in an open shed, next to a large bull; a few cars drove by, a hundred-yards from the open shed, it was first light, the sun just appearing lighting up the small shack next to the shed, in the shack is where the two individuals lived.
The old man's hands stretched up to heaven, and he cried "Allah...!" and he fell to his knees, his niece still in amazement at this extraordinary birth, in this intriguing but not much more than a dirt farm batch.
For the rest of the brief five minutes, they witnessed from this little farm, as they remained in silent, the birth of a devil-goat, so the old man called it inside their minds, in lack of a better name.

Fatima was an orphan taken in by her uncle several years prior, her mother had died earlier because of her delicate health, she died on top of a Cairo bridge, that crosses the Nile River, under a cardboard box she had used for shelter, there Fatima remained until her uncle, Solomon, found her, and took the child to the rented out piece of land he now plowed and planted and harvested. The lonely stony plot spreading to the highway produced vegetable, and for the most part, the owner charged little for it, feeling it better to keep the price reduced and someone, thus, having someone to watch the land, and kill two birds with one stone. It really was just a large patch of land, being farmed, not a farm in the sense of those we have in the Midwest of Minnesota.
The road passed several small farms, and the edge of the lot crossed the road; it was all plateau here, and the great pyramids were not far away, a beautiful sight for the tourist driving by, should he not look at the dirt farm on the other side, a disenchanted side, and in front of the lot, was an old hinged fence, long was the fence and in front of the roadway, and tall was grass along side of it.
The old man's face twitched with his dull and dim dark eyes as he stared at the creation of this suddenly new birth of a creature, a voice that sounded like the beating of an old deep and rustic metal drum came from its frame. It leaped up and onto its hind hoofs, Solomon was saying at the time: "See I told you to kill it...!" (Just how to kill it he’d not mentioned.)
She left him presently, stepped a few feet closer to the creature, "You'll have a chance to live," she mumbled as she looked down upon the creature, the old man clutched his fists now.
The harsh throbbing voice, faint as it was, could somehow understood Fatima, it spoke in a foreign voice, foreign to any other language ever produced on earth, yet she could understand. She had many questions in her mind: such as, where did it come from, or you come from, for she was looking at the creature, and how did it get here, what exactly was it? She didn't ask those questions out loud, she just thought them.

(I can answer all these questions for you though, but she would never know it for herself, not exactly anyway. It was a tragic thing that took place, casual as it seemed in the sense, one day a person’s life is as it always was, and then an abrupt change takes place, but after a moments time, it all seems somewhat normal again, hence, the breath of life entering a young goat, life from another species, horrible looking, and shockingly creating a goat like demon, is not casual, but it seemingly became so in time, in a short period of time for Fatima anyhow. It came from a place called: "The Prison House for Angels", these angelic beings were fallen angels. You've never heard of it you say, well, if not, don't be incongruous, for there is and was a place called that, it was beyond Orion, created by God, long before the earth was created. It was needed more than ever back then, for when the angels rebelled, where would the damned go, God spread out a village for the damned in the dark hidden parts of the universe. Here no one could hear the faint, ghostly cries of the voices behind the invisible wall, like lions in cages they were. All floating in space and quivering in the darkness, dying in their silence from the rest of the universe, this was their abode, showered with streaks of crimson fires far beyond their reach. And then, Azaz'el was released, to be brought down to earth's hell, for what reason I do no know. And somehow he escaped and now he was being reborn in this goat, secretly you could say, for who beyond God Himself would realize such a birth was taking place, surprisingly on the very planet the two angelic beings were to bring Azaz'el, but of course to the lower chambers of the earth.)

Terror had swamped Solomon, yes that is what the goat-devil saw in his eyes, as it stretched out its new body to several feet; now a hoofed beast, with three horns, naked with wet hair from foot to crown. Solomon now showed more poignant terror than anyone could imagine. But the adolescent feared not, actually she started to laugh lugubriously. (The creature lost something in its birth process, something it had when in the "Prison House for Angels," it lost its matured mind, it was now deformed, defected, reduced to a lower capacity; it knew, but didn't know-you could say, it heard the voice of the girl, fragmented, and it stared blankly at her, he called out: 'Mother!' The creature was a child beast, a devil-goat, so it looked. It may have escaped one destiny, only to find a dreary new one.)
It noticed a faint skeptical smile on the girl, heard her humming softly, "You are right, uncle, I should have killed the creature, but I can't." she said.
The uncle tried to brush away her crazy talk, her new obsessed caring for the creature, as the creature now was all of eight feet tall, broad at the shoulders, the Uncle horrible tense, standing by that open shad, the bull uneasy, brooding about the hay.


Chapter Two: The Light

It was early morning, and light starting to stretch out over the land, the struggling birth was over; the goat's mother had died giving birth to the creature. And Fatima was now its new mother, or so the creature thought. Fog was disappearing from the roadway, and the old man was done with his quivering, all sat back against the wooden wall of the shed, seemingly like ghosts. The foreign language of the creature seemed to adjust to Fatima's mind, although to the uncle it seemed to be nothing more than grunts and groans. The ghostly death of the mother goat, in the early silence of the morning was no more than a blur now. The old man had buried the goat, in fear if he ate it, or cut it opened, it might trigger a new development, one he didn't want. Thus, he took the goat behind the shed and buried it. Perhaps that sounds foolish, I know, but I can only tell you how it was, foolish or not. Now flashing lights from the roadway appeared. "Damn it," the old man said as he walked around the shed and the shanty house, looking at the fog lift, the car lights, "Damn it, you can't live with this thing, it's deadly, and it will murder us in the middle of the night." Then as he became visible to the creature and Fatima, he went blank, showing no emotion in his face, as if not to show any signs of complaint, said nothing distinguishable, only mumbles as came out of his mouth as often an old man does. He went over to the two, pushed the dark black huge bull to the side, it moved quickly, then the old man said to Fatima, "You thought you heard a dead mans cry earlier within the birth of this creature, I do believe it was his mind changing, agonizing in the process, it went like a leap, from what it was to a child, look at it, it seems to be bloodthirsty and at the same time, excited over you looking at it, as a child to a mother. It's a real thing for sure, but who owns it, is a different story."

(What was going through his mind perhaps was: could he be so lucky as to try to control this freak of nature, and make money off it in the near future-like 'King Kong'? I mean, was this a chance in a life time, or was this strange creature indeed too dangerous to play such a game with, for the old man said to Fatima: "Strangeness nowadays, people pay to see that!" It was more of a question-statement, but Fatima did not answer, and the creature simply looked at Solomon when he spoke, then looked at Fatima, somehow feeling if she looked decrepit because of his voice or words, he was dead, or soon could be. But she held her facial features, likened to flat. At this point the old man looked confused, an echo went back and forth in his brain; again he stood clutching his fists, almost fearful, but now with more force, and with anger...he shrugged his shoulders, started to walk out of the shed, and with a leap the creature grabbed him by throat, lifted him up above the ground, his feet dangling, Fatima just looked, and looked and looked, and his mouth opened, and its teeth showed and it was hungry, and Fatima looked, and looked and looked again, and the creature's teeth were sharp like the fangs of a huge dogs, and it seemed like he wanted to swallow a good portion of the old man's right limb, it was dangling in front of his eyes, and he was hungry, and his limbs were just dangling helplessly, a rip, a quick rip is all it would take, then the creature smiled as it looked at Fatima, as if awaiting for permission to eat, and he'd be fed, and she smiled...!)


Part Three: The Harm

"Let me go," yelled the old man. But as the Azaz'el looked at Fatima, her face suggested with some bitterness, not to, as she held a cold look, reprovingly saying 'no' and quicker than the sheering of sheep's wool, the creature had in its mouth a limb, the right arm of the old man, and you could hear the crunching of the bones, and in his throat, which was now lumped with the limb (likened to a large snake swallowing a dog whole), the creature tried to swallow...it came to look again upon its mother, Fatima. He dropped the old man to the ground, her eyes widened, "Why," cried the old man, "I took you in as a child, why did you not stop the creature, he is some sort of devil beast and animal?"
The beast crawled now on its knees, rampaging around the shed like a devil-dog. The old man stayed put, not wanting to get near him Then Fatima assured him, that the creature would not harm him again, that it was a example for him, a terrible one yes, but nonetheless a lesson for him not to decide to do her child harm, and the saber tooth creature now clasped her hands, and kissed them.
"Oh Uncle Solomon why? Why do you think such things of Azaz, he is just born and you want to harm him, he came alone into this empty hearted world; this is a warning for you."
She was irritated with him; she glanced at him with a look of pleading almost, yet visibly wilted.
"You mean to tell me," said the old man, bleeding from his shoulder, "a girl like you is the mother of this creature like man, or devil, and it fails me?"
"Certainly I am," she said abruptly.
"Well, I'll be-" said the old man as he began to fall into a bewilderment, drift off to sleep, the pain was too much, and there was no relief, and when he woke up, several hours later, his wound had been attended to, one arm less of courses.

Belphegor, Demon King (Parts 2 and 3)



Part II
Chapter Four: Azaz'el's Thoughts (The Sixth Day)

He had awoke two days later, in the gray cold light of the morning, he felt condemned, his executioner was not far away from him in the shed like house, Fatima was not in the room ... he could hear her voice outside talking to the bull though...

It was the sixth day; the creature sat his back against the outside shanty, a mountain of tall grass around him, the grass slightly wet, his forehead damp, he touches the earth, rumples his shoulders, over lapping his hands (at the same time), one over the other, a few birds sit peeking over the edge of the wooden roof of the shanty (hut) like house. He would like to cry, but he had never done such a thing, he didn't know how, and his feelings were more like thoughts, than emotions. He spots a lizard, it runs, and he finds out his reflexes are faster than the lizards, and Azaz grabs him by the tail, or what seems to be the extended backend of the foot long creature, drops him into his mouth, like a raindrop falling into a bucket, swallows the lizard complete, that was his breakfast.
Along the roadside, dust is raised in spires. He hears thunder, sees water but is having a hard time reasoning the two out, how do they fit together, he comes to the conclusion, thunder is produced when it is close to water.
He has not looked into a mirror but he knows his face is different than his mother’s, I mean his human mother, he has seen in a mud puddle, his face is more like a goat, but goats cannot reason like him, they go to the slaughter, he tells himself, he will not allow that. Yet his mind is not stretched out as far as it should be, but he knows at one time it was, and perhaps in time to come it will again be more knowledgeable.
The old man is feeding the bull now, he, Azaz, can hear him talking to himself, he doesn't like him all that much, but he is his mother's, something or another; his arm was more tasty than the lizard he concludes. Fatima is planting something afar by the roadway. He pulls at his face, trying to figure out if he is inside a disguise, "Where is the practical part of me," he asks himself. The bold grass still is hiding him, his eyes closed, and "Who is this inside of me?" he asks. All rhetorical questions for the most part.


Chapter Five: Twilight (the Fourteenth Day)


Azaz's attention was caught by a movement in the shadows of the grass, he had not seen twilight before either, it was emerging, day and night were closing in on one another, and forming dusk. Something huge was in the tall grass, bulky. He was fascinated with the movement, not scared, but enthralled. He saw yellow eyes in the shadows of the grass. With a shout of brutal yelps, the thing with excessive agility and with speed, and after a moment, plainly showed himself, big as an ox. Azaz, moving swiftly he leaped toward what he figured would be his first victim. The monster raged with ferocity. In an instant both were fighting, and the black hairy beast with horrible looking eyes, almost next to one another (dry blood on its fury like body from a previous kill) crushed Azaz to his knees, but Azaz simply caught his breath, never got tired, he just didn't know how to fight, he tried to rip the torso off is legs of this dark beast, and stuff gushed out of it. But still the beast was not exhausted; it picked him up, and cast him aside like a staggering drunkard.
Now the beast's yellowish eyes glittered hellishly, and came back for a second strike. No word had passed between the two warriors, and when Fatima came out of the shed to see what was happening, she merely fainted on the spot, as she looked at the horror taking place. Uncle Solomon gazed from the window, helplessly, but hoping wherever the beast was from, it would kill Azaz, but it couldn't.
"Don't be afraid," said Azaz, to his mother, his voice sounded strange, but he had picked up a vocabulary in just fourteen days, one that matched her language.
As she tried to get up, her eyes flared with terror, and she cried, and the wild fluttering of her heart could not stop, and somehow it could be felt by Azaz, and thus, resuming his attack on the beast once he knew his mother was safe, but the frightened, thing ran away.
"Are you hurt?" she exclaimed quickly to Azaz.
"Don't worry about these scratches," he answered, though his wounds privately hurt. (The creature like him, had fangs and it seemed they were venomous.)
She stopped her sobs, and dried her eyes with her forearm. They were hungry and although Azaz was somewhat like a cannibal, he simply muttered "Me too..." looking at Solomon looking out of the window as if he would be a good dinner.
"Was that a devil," she asked her uncle, as they sat on the porch eating chicken?
"I did not see it all that clear, it was bigger than a jackal, smaller than a giant bear, perhaps this creature of yours has brought up from the bowels of hell, devils to bring him back where he belongs, I hope we do not get infested with them now."
In stead of answering her Uncle, she clenched her fists as if to say: I will not even let hell have him, he is mine. Her eyes lighted up, "You will not hurt him, right?" she asked her uncle.
The absurdity of the question left him speechless, yet he found the words to say,
"How can I hurt him, his muscles are like knotted iron, and his fists like mallets."



Part III
Chapter Six: The Bear Demon (21st Day)
Belphegor, Demon King


The Bear-demon returned the following week, commanded one of them, from a distance that he, Azaz to relinquish his life to them (inferring it was either now or later, and if it was later there would be a lot of suffering on his part for eons). Should he do so now as he was told or being asked, he would place him in the heartland of the lower world and in charge of several legions?
"I am called, who brings me tidings in the skins of bears?" asked Azaz'el.
One of the two great bears answered, "I am Agaliarept, the Henchman of Hell, who asks for thee, and my assistant is Gusoyn, a great guard of the towers over Hades, the great sea of the Netherworld. And we were sent by the King of Demons, no other than Belphegor, whom takes orders from the Ten-winged Archangel, known as Lucifer-thus we must and will deliver you to the lower world."
-Now standing side be side, and Azaz'el standing by the shed all within a swings distance, the two great bear-demon, as they are disguised, stand erect and firm, sternness in their faces, as Azaz grips an axe resting against the side of the abode, raises it and with the swiftness of an eagle a blow with the blade severs through the naked neck of Agaliarept, the blade sinks clean through, and his head falls to the ground, rolls off his shoulder like a egg, as Azaz kicks it with his heal, blood bursts from the cavity of the body of Agaliarept, dark blood, yet the bear figure remains strong on his shanks; Gusoyn, reaches down picks up the head, gives it back to Agaliarept, as it turns about on its own, eyes staring at Azaz. The head then rests on Agaliarept’s forearm, and against his chest.
It would seem to an on looker he was unharmed that only a mishap too place; his gruesome trunk continues to bleed like a waterfalls, and his head mumbles as they part, it twists to see Azaz's eyelids looking wide open, and unblinking, brooding at him.

Agaliarept, Satan's Henchman

Agaliarept's voice echoed back to Azaz, "See that you get ready, you will go as Hell has demanded, this is a promise, for I charge thee with assault unto your brethren."
A rude roar came from Azaz'el, as Fatima and Solomon, became almost breathless, and hiding beyond the arch of the doorway, halfway inside the abode, letting out a sigh of relief, unbelievable liberation from a world they know little about.

Interlude

Life with a Surrogate Mother

(About three months into Fatima's surrogating, Azaz'el.) Inside the dwelling were two wooden chairs, a chimney where charcoal was burning, there were many cushions on the floor, an old cloak hung on a nail by one of the two windows in the shack. The wooden floor cracked as you walked from one side to the other. Solomon had sat on those two chairs seemly and noble for many years, but not any longer, his woes were yet to be mended.
On a small table, was a clay basin to wash up with, a water pump outside alongside of the shack.
Solomon always ate double helpings of food at his dinner table, but since Azaz'el had arrived, and grown to a large size, that was for the meantime history. He enjoyed an assortment of fish, but it seemed chicken was cheaper, and so were the vegetables he grew on his farm land.
The table in the center of the shack, stood on trestles, was raised a few inches when Azaz'el sat at it, his knees doing the lifting. They had spoons, forks and knives to eat with, but Fatima had to teach Azaz, as she called him, how to use them. Azaz especially liked baked bread and spices on his food.

During the meals, Azaz watched Fatima and Solomon pray before they ate, but never did he inquire on this matter, only gave weird head movements.
Surrogating was new for Fatima; she had never been a mother of any kind, although she perhaps tried to at times with the bull in the shed. Azaz came to realize Fatima for as young as she was, she was not his real mother; on the other hand he found she was fairer in face than any woman he had thus far put eyes on, smooth flesh to her skin, and her proportions were better than most others he felt. Her complexion was lovely, and had she not been her surrogate mother, who knows what would have taken place.
On the other side of the coin, was Solomon, he was quite thin, with wrinkled cheeks, his throat was also wrinkled, although a beard covered most of it, and his waist was thin, with a sunken in buttocks.
Solomon had come to think these passing days, it was either bad luck or ones lot in life, for him to have met Azaz'el, but during this period of three months, once, and only once, did Azaz'el say "Good-day," to Solomon, and in return gracefully Solomon bowed as if to obey, but Azaz took little head in it, he was perhaps fighting his nature, it took a lot for him to say that.


Chapter Seven: the Young Year
Azaz'el (before Earth Time)


The young year-began, thus Azaz remained watchful for the return of the demonic bears, or whatever new disguise they may have grown into, for he yearned for life on earth more everyday, and everyday was special, and everyday his mind matured ten-times faster than a normal mind would, thus remembering bits and pieces of his long incarceration in "The Prison House for Angels." That is to say, he was now remembering who he was, and what he was, and what he looked like before earth was created, and during and when he was sent to earth to look over ancient man, and from the clouds he did so, but he was one of the Old Ones, that guarded those who took human flesh, and cohabitated with them. His sins were not as severe as those of his brethren, so he recalled, but nonetheless he was sent to the prison house, and he also remembered his time was up, and was to be brought to the lower world, and somewhere in-between, this journey, he found a porthole in space, so it seemed, and escaped, and found himself being cast into an animal, and being of no human origin, he was reborn, but disfigured.
During the early part of the evenings, to late dark, he helped Solomon and Fatima with the small farm work, doing chores, etcetera, that needed to be done, mending of the fences also, and feeding and settling of the bull, and so forth and on...he didn't care to be seen by the public lest he be put into a freak show, and lose his freedom, and consequently be hurtle from, and out of his earthly existence, by what now he considered the enemy, that's why he wanted to grab the moment, it was, he figured, was his only treasure left for him.
Many nights he got drunk, being introduced to the alcoholic spirits of mankind-and as months slipped by quickly, he was merry with even Solomon, whom he had at one time a rather harsh liking for. Perhaps all this counterbalanced what he felt would be his ending. And so again I say, the months past to June, the 6th month of the year, and to the 6th day of the month and to the 6th hour, in the PM, and on this day, all hell broke loose.
-On this little lot of land, this farm blemish in the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, off the side road, the earth became cold, clouds uplifted, producing harsh hail dropping to the ground, making it hard, as a hundred beings (demonic beasts), a horde from hell, stomped the ground with blows from their feet, shaking the earth, and the abode, and all the structures on the farm. They came out of the long grass, and bushes, and came out of nowhere (so it seemed), dark it was over the farm, as if twilight had been subdued. Two hundred yellow eyes glistening, approaching. A drought filled the throats of Fatima and Solomon.


Chapter Eight: The Sting-tailed Mantic ores
The Sting-tailed Mantic ores and Gusoyn


Sting-tailed Mantic ores, that is what appeared on the premises of Solomon's and Fatima's farm, in demonic form. They had stingers on the ends of their tails, as if to sting the life out of Azaz'el, and bring him willing or unwillingly to the lower world.
Azaz'el knew it was war, and the six months he had on earth, ended up being only yesterdays, as this day was to be his reckoning.
All the beasts stood in a horseshoe fashion kind of formation, in front of the shack that the three inhabitants had lived in, Fatima and Solomon, hiding behind the door, and Azaz'el in front of the shack.
There were no more bears, only mantic ores, and Agaliarept, with Belphegor, who were in their natural skins, Agaliarept with human features from his neck to his feet, which were wide with long nails, and his head was more like a horse. Belphegor, was naked as was Agaliarept, but had wings on, Agaliarept did not. He had a long face; both were of a cunning design. Gusoyn, was also present, and had a crazy look on his face, he was jumping up and down, with a kind of dagger in his hand-crazily jumping, the rest were calmly waiting for someone to give an order, the rest being the Sting-tailed Mantic ores, except for Buer the Savage Eater (which I will explain to you, as well as introduce you to him, in the next chapter).
And there outside, right in front of the shack, a feast began, a kind of royal revelry, before the slaughter you might say. Dancing and singing, provoking Azaz to strike the first blow, yet knowing, when he did, it was all over. (Demons are powerful, yet not as powerful as angelic beings, and arch angels, are even more superior, and this occurred to Azaz'el. Also what came to mind, was Lucifer, he, was watching from the gray and dark clouds above, pacing like a hungry lion; would he come to the rescue if indeed Azaz'el an archangel could subdue these demons. There was no way to win; this is what really circled in his mind.

Light laughter began-.

You do know the quest at hand, that is to say, Hell's quest, and Azaz'el wishing to remain on earth, so I care not to trouble you with the tale of it, save, a miner point, Lucifer was watching from the moon most of the time, up to this evening, now near the clouds he paced, thus, Buer the Savage Eater as he is known, was contemplating to spark the first blow, to get the show on the road, perhaps that is why the King of Demons wished him present. The question at hand also was (and that is perhaps the reason Lucifer kept his distance), why did God allow this to go to this point, when it was ordained Azaz'el be brought to the lower world, brought by angelic beings, to a point in space, the winged demons were to take over, but never hand the chance to, for Azaz'el was said to have escaped, or fell into a hole in space. Oh well, we may never know, and as for God, who knows His reasons.


Part IV
Chapter Nine: Buer the Savage Eater
Buer Demonic Savage Eater


Before man was man, and demons were demons, Buer was among a group of souls, that ruled the earth, with other souls and angelic beings, he was the first to go against the will of God, and join Lucifer in rounding up support by his kind (Lucifer being the leader of his kind at this time), and thus, a trader to God, and to his kind to win the favor of Lucifer, which he did, and now we can call early man, and thus his kind turned into what now is known as the demonic forces of Hell and Earth, but he was turned into a demon eater a beast of a rat, a savage among savages, and he was waiting to eat Azaz'el if indeed he could grab such a moment.
Buer the Savage Eater (so he was know to be), stepped out of the crowed of demonic forces now surrounding Solomon's farm, he was-if anything-unpredictable and shrewd. He was all demonic, and wanted to be of a high command in hell, among demons, "Why should you rule seven legends in hell, when I have myself been waiting for such a promotion (for hell does have its hierarchy, and Azaz’el was to hold such a position, and there was, as we can see, envy growing).”
He was in rat form, which was his real form. He had a wide mouth, dripping slim constantly from it; long thin, limps, and a skeleton tight skinned body, that showed his ribs. He was vicious, if anything, and could, and would, and did eat or bully demons, but to this angelic being, could he do such a thing, he thought so, but it remained questionable. He had been perhaps in hell too long, not knowing the powers of angelic beings, but he was about to find out (for even Agaliarept, Satan's Henchman brought assistance when he sought out Azaz'el, thus, trying to talk, and perhaps subdue him that way, not really wanting an out and out battle with him, and hoping he did not realize his strength.
Thick was the saber teeth of the rat like Buer, Agaliarept went to stop Buer saying, "We are not breed like him, do not overextend yourself."
But Buer just laughed, "He is nothing but a goat, and a tall thin goat at that, and I shall shred him like I have to so many in the pits of hell..." and he leaped on Azaz'el, and his fangs dug deep into his armpits of what he referred to as the devil-goat, and his body folded up like a cocoon, then he fell to his knees; all the demonic warriors unlocked their eyelids, felt Buer was for the moment their hero, he was beating an angelic being (unheard of, and never seen before), but Agaliarept just shook his head, he knew better.
"What is your name rat?" asked Azaz'el "I have never seen eyes like yours, a cold blue flame dances in them, I shall remove them in a moment." And he stood up, as Buer got into some kind of a stance to attack.
"I am one of the Old Ones, have you forgot?" Said Azaz'el to Buer; now the horde of demonic beasts turned their alliance, to bewilderment, and watched and waited the command to attack, for it had to come from either the King of Demons, or Lucifer Himself, not even Agaliarept had that power. Buer was simply out of place.
Buer had primitive passions you could say, violence, traditional for hell, warlike; battle was Buer's custom and contest to life. Primitive and gusty was his temper also, but courage, he may have had, although inferior to Azaz'el, perhaps he could scare him to death or to submission he figured. He did not know him in the old days; as did Semyas or Lucifer- nor did legend follow him as did it for Lucifer.
Azaz'el was no fool, and with a crimson haze of fury, and a glare of battle ready, vengeance, his every muscle seemed to be filled with iron revenge. He tried to warn the rat beast, as he called him; in the old days he would not have done so. Swift and brief he would have made this battle.
Arrogant eyes roved contemptuously over the frame of Azaz'el, with unbearable scorn. With an act of distinctiveness, he attacked Azaz'el again, and with bestial rage Azaz'el sprang up and rushed at Buer, both colliding, both roaring, breast to breast, the rat reckless, Azaz'el, with full strength, clutching this creature like a rag, and throwing him about, a being stronger than he had ever endured. This he, Buer, came to realize quickly, for the impact of his efforts were nothing to Azaz'el, and his crushing embrace, broke all the ribs in Buer's body, and he lay on the ground no longer an antagonist. Still with clenched fists, Azaz'el mauled his way back to the rat beast, several demons tried to hold him back, but could not, and thus, Azaz'el snapped the spine of Buer before he stopped his attack. Lucifer was laughing overhead, and Semyas was gushing with smiles, it was his old friend at his best. Buer tried to get up, with a sagging broken jaw, but fell back down, blood spreading out over the ground: it was fiesta time thought Semyas.


Chapter Ten: The Offering
Lucifer
The Ten-winged Beast


On a pyre Semyas the Seer and astrologer of the ancient renegade angles was on hand to nail Azaz'el (for only another angelic being could hold another in check, thus, two supernatural beings), thus, he drove nails through his palms to the rock, the flat part of the alter and through, and into the granite nailed him at all four points, through all four limbs, as the Ten-winged Beast flew to and from the gate to the pyre then over the shack, over a large treetop then high above all that, as the surrender was taking place.
He was like a camel in heat, as if he was trying to get his high or getting his high at that very moment, but wanting to be safe, or perhaps too arrogant to join the rest of the horde in their appointed task.
Then he, Semyas kissed the hand of Azaz'el, after that he laid a kerchief over his eyes, as if he was subdued and could do nothing, and at this point it looked so. He was a brother to him at one time (that was the kiss); both had walked the earth and were among the leaders of two-hundred other angelic renegades—of five-thousand years ago. But there was no mercy in Semyas' eyes, for he had been buried under tons of rocks for millenniums. Now, seemingly he had either escaped, or was set free, he didn't say, and I don't know, but he was assigned this duty by none other than the Beast, and the kiss and the subduing, along with blinding of the eyes was part of the ritual.

(Ah, one could hear the crickets in the background, the wings of the Beast flopping back and forth as he flew by, the sound of the gate's metal clasps moving back and forth, the wind picking up.)

I intend now to tell you what took place on that pyre, though it may seem strange to the story, but it was as it was.
In everyway, Azaz'el could not escape, the forces were too strong, the winds from the wings of the Beast, and Semyas' nails were made out of some evil force from another sphere, and the demonic forces behind and around the pyre, added to the physical if not mental forces at hand, all restraining.
It is fare to say, I do believe, endless thoughts invaded his being, Azaz'el's brain. He was acknowledged as a gift to hell, from the "Prison House of Angels." And why was he working so hard to defy all the shadowy evils above and below the earth? Perhaps a question everyone was asking, even Solomon and Fatima, save the Beast and his demonic and angelic forces were dumfounded to say the least.
"Here is a fragment of your creed, brethren," said Semyas, "say it after me!" he commanded in a harsh voice: "That ever from the fire, evil's all of my velour, be it gained that to Hell, and all spheres of the Beast I shall be courteous, that I give up all piety of thought, friendliness, chastity and chivalry, and change thy heart for deception, and perfect evil...I shall be close as the demonic forces need me, I shall lead in Hell, that being: without mercy, indifference to human life..."
Semyas carved into his chest a pentangle, and imprinted within that the given name of Satan, 'Lucifer'; next, he was set free, arrayed by all those around him (that was the kiss), good tidings, then Semyas commanded he kill Fatima and Solomon, to show his new devotion; to eat their flesh, as he had done before; to prove to the High Prince of Darkness, his honorable heart.


Part V
Chapter Eleven
Concluding Chapter


So what took place that evening, on the 6th month, 6th day of the month, at the 6th hour, was this: Azaz'el was to be considered the host of the demons, to be a leader in hell, to have several legends at his fingertips. And he was to kill, eat the flesh of his mother, Fatima, to show his honorable heart to the horde, and Lucifer, whom was watching from the edge now, the edge of the top of a tree, and his mind was of this same anticipation.
As he walked toward Fatima, he stopped in front of Solomon, her uncle, feeling he would have the answer (an answer) to a sudden question he was seeking, and he whispered something in his ear, and Solomon whispered something back. And they both stood looking at one another oddly; Fatima confused, and standing by the archway of her door, fearfully tense, and as confused as any of the onlookers. Then out of nowhere, or so it seemed, Azaz said to Fatima, "Climb on my back mother!"
Fatima, unprepared, gladly did, as did Solomon. Next, Azaz'el did another odd thing, like a prince, proudly, and tauntingly, he started walking down the pathway to the front gate of the farm, through the horde of demons; just like that, with almost a luminous hue around him, when he walked to the gate, haughtily strode, many of the demon (fierce looking in all respects) fell flat on their faces on the field, onto and over one another. They all looked dumbfounded at this happening, confused, what he up was up to, and what was happening to them.
At the gate he lowered his huge back, his face was grim, with all the power in his limbs aloft he heaved the two on his back over it, and over the gate so both Fatima and Solomon could roll off, and over his head, and both did, and he told them to stand near the roadway, that this field of land was fated for the moment; and as the horde grabbed him, to take him to the lower world, they could not pull his soul from his body, it was what they were after. They shredded his body like macaroni. And there he died, and the only thing that could be seen was a white mist coming from his inner being, and carried upward by one female angelic being.

The Angel Lailis

"What did he whisper to you?" asked Fatima to Solomon.
"He asked me if there ever was a demonic creature, or angelic being ever forgiven by God—given a second chance? And if so whom? And I said to him, there was perhaps two to my understanding, Gilgamesh of Sumer was a giant and demigod, who on his death bed, accepted the one and only true God, he had found his faith I do believe by listening to Noah. And there was a man called Christopher, whom had the seed of those lost angelic renegades, as Azaz'el has, so I told him, and he was saved, after helping Christ across the river. That is when he turned to you and asked you to get on his back, like St. Christopher would have done, and did do, and thus, he walked us down and through the demonic path, Lucifer and his horde created, but for some reason, perhaps God, shifted their minds for a moment, to save us, and it seems, to save him, even though he was executed, but then, so was Christopher."
Said Fatima, in a light hearted but confused way, "I don't quite see it that way."
"Well," added Solomon, "We got work to do in the morning, some hoeing and some weeding and...oh well, you know."
And the two walked back to their shack, the demonic forces had disappeared, and the body of a goat lay on the ground, where once was, Azaz'el.


From a Dream, Witten in Huancayo, Peru, 10-24 & 26-2007, the author spent time in Egypt (1998), and the farm he is talking about, exists, as do all the folks and animals around this farm, in the story, and even the names are the same, the only thing fiction is this story is the devil-goat, which is the dream part. Reedited 3/2008