Novel Excerpt

An Excerpt From The Autumndale Manifesto

The crooked shadow drifted through him. His insides seized and his vision spun. The shadow stopped over Emma’s shoulder and lingered behind her like a menacing thunderhead. Emma kept her head down, oblivious. She leaned closer to the flower bed. Her faint auburn hair flowed in a dance of innocence against time’s gale. The crooked shadow began to grow. Adam’s heart rattled against his ribs and his mouth flooded with the taste of electricity. Flashes of brilliant white burned his eyes and a concussive wave of needle stings pummeled his arms. The shadow came alive.

Scuffed work boots grew like vile weeds out of the dirt. A pair of potato sack jeans appeared, releasing an untamed gut over their constricted waistline. A stained checkered shirt hugged the creature’s soft upper half and a green trucker’s cap crowned its greasy skull. Adam’s breath stopped. A glistening meat cleaver appeared in the monster’s hand. The creature stood behind Emma with its mouth ajar. Its eyes snarled.  Adam screamed and charged at his uncle.

Uncle Hank let out a guttural shriek and raised the cleaver. Emma continued stroking the unborn flowers. The cleaver swung down. Emma’s inhuman wail rattled the barn doors.

Adam tripped and fell into the dirt. The cold morning light turned red. His gaze locked onto the unreachable slaughter before him. The cleaver pumped up and swung again, then again, gaining the rhythm of a rusted piston thrust back to life. Full crescendo. Adam winced and yelled and screamed and cried. He could not move.

The butchery ended in seconds. The past faded and the darkening forest returned. Adam watched pieces of Emma’s hacked torso sink like dying lanterns into the dusty barnyard path.

 “Hank!” Adam screamed. “Hank!” He screamed the name again and again. The word lost its meaning. It became a dry hack in his throat.

Julian remained standing at the opposite edge of the stream. He heard Adam’s deranged screams echo in the distance. He could not move. The numb sensation in his legs had grown into cascading waves of searing pain. He turned on the flashlight at the back of his phone. The white plastic beam cut into the trees across the water, robbing them of the last hints of twilight. He felt an urge to make a call. Only the emergency number showed. He put the phone away and let the darkness swallow him.       

Autumnal Ghosts

Autumnal Ghosts (2017)


Edgar slowed his pace as the burial oak crawled into his field of vision from beyond the trail's end. His son Nathan scurried at his side, riding on a meek ripple of strength that would soon fade away. The cascading breeze threw some of the fallen leaves into a whimsical dance around them. Their jumbled earthly hues reminded Edgar of a funeral procession, a flurried gathering of heavy souls. He no longer wept for the boy. Edgar could no longer contest the burning seal of doom woven into his family line. His grief fell into a permeating numbness, bound to his bones by the inescapable gravity of Nathan's imminent death.

The father glanced at his son's sheepish face and smiled at the soft painless expression. Soon it would be torn away and replaced with the hollow stare of suffering. Nathan would be forced back into the country house, back into his shoddy bed, and back under the grip of a fresh syringe. The boy's eyes told his father that he was not yet through fighting the disease. Edgar marveled at his son's strength from behind his own veil of experience. Surely he would beg for suicide in Nathan’s place.

On hushed footsteps they entered the wide embrace of the tree's shadow. Their awareness sunk into its ethereal realm. Its rustic sprawling facade inhaled the remnants of the fading day's warmth, hinting at the barren winters of its past. They approached the claws of its twisting roots and made their way in deliberate paces around the base of the trunk. The wind shifted course and the tree waved to the father a brisk greeting with its outer leaves. To the boy it meant farewell.

"Is God real? Will He be there, when I go?" said Nathan. Edgar looked down at the boy's solemn countenance, which drifted like a fog below the pale hairless curvature of his skull. 

"Yes, God is real," said Edgar. He held the boy's shoulder to assert his lie. "God is both around us and within us. He was here before our planet came to be, and he'll be there when everything is gone."

"Good to know, dad. I get scared imagining what nothing will feel like. I hope God is kind," Nathan said.

"God is beyond anything we know," Edgar said. "What really matters is that you are kind."

The imposing aura radiating from the tree opened a deluge of centuries inside Edgar's mind. Through wealth and trouble, and through toil, feasts, and famine, the names engraved into the trunk fell together and coalesced into a single black diamond, a macabre shrine for those unknowable souls.

"Why are we here?" asked Nathan.

"I wanted to show you the others," Edgar said as he stepped closer towards the engravings.

"What do you mean?"

"The others like you, the kids from our family who got sick when they were eleven years old.” Edgar softened his voice for the forlorn boy who would never know manhood. “Think of them as autumnal ghosts. They blessed their loved ones with their summer light and then drifted off to be with God before the early frost came." Edgar waved his palm over several engravings in the side of the tree.

“Were they lonely?" asked Nathan. 

"No. They were loved,” said Edgar. He spoke like a somber grandfather. “At first I didn't believe the rumors, and I stopped thinking about them for a while. Then you were born and I was overjoyed, but then…" Edgar's mind froze as he remembered his wife's suicide. "Then your mom got sick, so we came here."

"I didn't really know mom," said Nathan.

"Your first treatment started when she was already gone," said Edgar. "Her spirit was gone, anyway. I doubt you remember much from that time."

"Needles," said Nathan. "I remember all kinds of needles, and lots drilling and light."

"Then it's for the best," said Edgar. Nathan's expression grew inquisitive. Edgar's grief withheld much of the past from him.

"So you say those relatives caused my sickness? How?" Nathan scowled with the remaining strength in his face. "I don't know everything the doctors say but I know it's not a curse and I don't think I belong here with the others.”

"It's okay, son, just sit down on that grass for a minute, " said Edgar. He forgot to bring the emergency dose of medicine.

"But how can that be true? Why did you and mom have me at all?" said Nathan. He kneeled over and his chest convulsed under tiny, jagged breaths. A tear slid from his face and into the dirt.

"I spent months doing research after you got sick," said Edgar. "I tracked down my father's ancestors, from centuries ago."

Nathan sat down on the grass in a broken slump, but he did not collapse.

"I'm weak," Nathan said. "If I was stronger I could get better and be here with you, on the farm, and help out, and be happy." He succumbed to another coughing fit. Edgar considered running back to the house for the medicine, but remained still.

"You're not weak," Edgar said when the boy's throat finally ceased its grinding convulsions. "I know you feel like you are. We're all powerless against the tides of time. Your mother would have been so proud of you, so proud..." Edgar's eyes sank into the shadows.

"I'm still glad I could live for a little bit," said Nathan. Edgar cleared his throat to rattle the swelling of his own tears.

"Most of the boys remembered here had a phrase engraved near their name," Edgar said. He glanced over the older marks as his spirit buckled under the burden of what those who stood here long ago must have endured. The generational death spiral pulsed in his veins. Edgar’s own blood mocked him. The very same matter that kept him alive pulled his only son into an early grave. "If you have anything you want engraved here, just let me know. Take some time, think about it." 

Edgar took several steps around the oak while keeping an eye on his son sitting in the grass. Time’s reaper would heed none of his son’s bravery. Edgar's gut seized up with the sudden urge to tear down the tree, yet he knew he never would. He could boil out his own blood and drown Nathan in the finest medicine, but it wouldn’t matter. The immutable mechanism behind their parting lives would clamor on like a stone bull.

"I've got something, dad," Nathan said.

"Already? What is it?"

"Behold the shadows, for there is light," said Nathan. His voice and eyes sank into the dirt.

"That's beautiful," said Edgar.

In silence they watched the forest swallow the final rays of the setting sun. A line of birds bound for warmer lands shimmered beneath a lonely cloud as it hung motionless in the air. The life around them withdrew into the fringes of the land.

"What will you do after I'm gone?" said Nathan. They walked towards the house. Nathan’s feeble legs struggled to move over the flat dusty path. Edgar walked close enough to catch the boy, but his instinct told him not to.

"I'll remember you," said Edgar. "You're the bravest person I'll ever know." He paused, admiring the enduring spirit at his side. His burning shame reminded him that the boy was unreachable. "Then I'll keep going. I'll keep going and then some day you'll be all better and I'll see you again."

*****

Nathan passed away during the dead of night without a hint or a whimper. Edgar did not look at the body. When the early morning came, a silent ambulance carried the dead son away from the farm. Edgar signed a few papers for the driver and then returned to the house to complete his remaining chores. He watered the living room plants and gathered Nathan's old clothes and bedding. He stuffed the decrepit fabrics into a large cotton sack and placed it in the center of the backyard fire pit. He fetched a tin canister of ignition fluid from beneath the deck's stairway and sprayed some of it on the cloth bundle. He lit the top of the pile. The flame burst forth with great force, then faded into a simmer. 

Edgar returned to the house to gather his wallet and car keys. He produced a hefty pile of unpaid medical bills from a seldom used drawer and walked out of the front door. On his way to his car Edgar threw the envelopes on top of Nathan's smoldering belongings. He sprayed the rest of the ignition fluid into the flame wisps and turned his back to them, walking away from the resurrected pyre.

The sun's disk rose over the shallow hills and the air remained still as the fire raged on, taking everything that it could.

Edgar drove his worn out sedan down the grey country road as his life dissolved into the monotone horizon behind him. In his soul there were no shadows, and so there was no light. The boy, the wife, and the autumnal ghosts tugged at his memory, hoping to extract some closing grace from his self reflection. He offered them none. He narrowed his eyes at the rising sun, pulled down the visor, and kept going.

Clementine

Clementine (2017)

In the burning red dreams of a summer haze

My mind was clearly in a daze

I found you so pretty and so fine

Please be mine forever Clementine

We went to England in July

Stars forever lit our flight

Beckoning what dreams may die

I'll hold you with all my might

In the ballroom you would rise and shine

As the music sang its rhyme

Glorious and so divine

Your beauty transcends time

The shots from out in the rain

Grabbed your shoulder you felt no pain

Then you were silent misaligned

In the chaos we both went blind

A long night of shivering fears

You were clinging to life like a tear

All hopes were dashed and died

Two nights gone you're no longer alive

In my mourning I will feel no might

No more love will be in my sight

I'll come visit your grave each time

If you stay mine forever Clementine

Blizzard Cover

Blizzard Cover (2017)

Oh, the blizzard's never seen the desert sands
I will set the tempo low in my commands
Come follow down the highway once trailed by my golden calf
Oh, the blizzard's never seen the desert sands

And I will drive it like a shepherd to the sun
It's the easiest decision I have done
Come follow down the highway once trailed by my golden calf
Oh, the blizzard's never seen the desert sands

And the bells up in the towers they will ring
And the frightened little choirs they will sing
They will tremble on their voices like it's from another shore
Oh, the frightened little choirs they will sing

I will sit up in the saddle of the storm
I will ride across the sea I stand before
Though the people on the beaches weigh just nothing bout themselves
I will sit up in the saddle of the storm

Oh, the blizzard's never seen the desert sands
And I never understood a written plan
I have set my house on fire 'cause I don't need it anymore
Oh, the blizzard's never seen the desert sands

Royal Carnival

Royal Carnival (2017)

              The travelling royal carnival was a sight to behold for the provincial citizens of the Dolmetha kingdom. They gathered in curious droves to witness rare examples of electronica technology as well as devices of miniature atomics, which were used to create wondrous displays of color and sound that adorned the midsummer sky. The old legends said these technologies were commonplace all around the world before the Last Great War. During that war the world shattered. Out of its ruins arose several kingdoms which have been constantly sparring for dominance ever since. Dolmetha was one of the few to successfully maintain its cache of Old World technology. Reginald stood in awe next to his father Edwin as the final array of detonated atomics lit up the night sky like a piercing beam straight from Heaven.

                “Father, look! Father, look! It… it is marvelous!” Reginald could not take his eyes off the glistening purple and blue display.

                “Yes, son. Amazing, isn’t it?”

                They continued watching the exploding lights in silence until the show’s climatic finish ran its course. While the festivities were dying down an unnaturally cold breeze swept across the field of observers. The chill must have come on earlier but the crowd was too preoccupied with the light show in the sky to notice. Edwin tightened his son’s light sweater around his shoulders as they made their way towards the carnival’s exit, but it was not enough protection from the suddenly piercing wind.

                “We better get home,” Edwin said in a worried tone. “The air is sinking fast.”

                “Why?” a curious and slightly confused Reginald asked. They picked up the pace. Tension rose in their extremities. Edwin did his best to press forward while maintaining his composure. Now was not the time to break into a panic. Not around his son. Not after the way last year’s attack took his mother’s life.

                “Can’t say for sure, son. ‘Been lots of rumors swirling around Khamna down south of us. Best not to worry. We’re hundreds of miles north of the border.”

                A murmur of voices from the crowd’s rear began picking up inertia as Edwin and his son continued walking towards the main road. The murmur then turned into a consistent hum until someone let out a deathly scream. The front of the crowd then broke into a run. Edwin scooped his boy off the ground and started running with the others. More screams followed from the back. The town’s analog emergency siren let out a series of bone grinding wails.

                “Hang on to me!” Edwin said in Reginald’s ear as he used his opposite shoulder to break through the crowd. The mass of people kept growing denser until it eventually came to a halt. The carnage in the rear continued to draw closer. Edwin and Reginald had nowhere left to go. The entire throng of people was walled in by a fence that did not exist even ten minutes prior.

                “What is the meaning of this? What is this?” a man yelled from the front of the pack.

                “They’ve got us trapped here on purpose!” shrieked a woman. “This can’t be happening! Not now! No! No!”

                Edwin stayed quiet and observant. He felt a strong sense of danger but did not want to react prematurely. He then tuned his attention toward the crowd’s rear and he heard the sound of his darkest nightmares. War hounds. Specially bred canines which were engineered to be of high intelligence and outfitted with steel implants in the claws and teeth. He heard human bones breaking under their insurmountable might. He heard gargled screams as the attacking dogs slashed the throats of their victims, moving from one target to the next with unparalleled efficiency. Then an electric voice broke through the chaos over what sounded like a public intercom. Seldom used technology, even in Dolmetha.

                “Test protocol thirteen underway. Running new protocol Population Control. Population Control status successful.”

                The message kept repeating over and over again in a maddening loop. The crowd kept trying to break the containment fence to no avail. Edwin braced for death. He held his son tighter and whispered in his ear.

                “Be strong, Reginald. I love you. Stay strong for me now, okay?”

                “Okay, dad,” said Reginald. He did not know what war hounds were. He was not yet jaded enough to develop the fear of a government using destructive weapons against its own people. Edwin knew better. He served in armor for Dolmetha for six years before Reginald was born. He knew of the unspeakable tactics that kingdoms used during conflict, he just never thought he would have to suffer through one as a family man with a dead wife. He tried his best to comfort Reginald during their final moments as the hounds closed in.

                “I want you to close your eyes, Reginald. Think of a happy memory and pretend you’re there. Think of long summer evenings relaxing by the lake or the curious adventure of your first day at school. Then let go, Reginald. Relax and let go. We’re going to be okay.”

                “Okay, dad,” said Reginald. His expression was docile and accepting.

                A hound then leaped from the darkness and knocked Reginald out of Edwin’s arms. The boy let out a yelp but was quickly muted. The hound destroyed his face with several swipes of its enhanced claws. Then it crushed Reginald’s skull and ripped apart his throat and upper chest with its teeth. Edwin let out a primal roar and went to the defense of his boy but he stood no chance as Reginald was already reduced to a pile of bleeding flesh and bone beaten into the soil. Edwin turned around to search for the attacker when a second hound tore into his back. He attempted to fight it off but made no progress as a third hound clawed at the front of his torso and systematically shredded his organs.

                They went down one by one, the members of the curious provincial crowd. The hounds left not a single person standing. The recorded message playing over the public intercom was shut down and the fence was broken down and stowed away. The royal authorities of Dolmetha ordered a thorough cleaning of the field the next morning.

Synthite

Synthite (2017)

               Dennis Jones took the dose of powdered synthite with an abrupt inhalation through his left nostril. After the initial burn settled down he took a seat on his couch and prepared to ride out the first wave of psychosis and delirium that would soon follow. He knew the dose taken was sufficient to break through and reach maximum effects. He also knew that the accompanying madness would wreak havoc on his psyche until the moment he transitioned to the other side.

                The drug was still a relatively untested novelty, even for seasoned psychonauts such as Dennis. Reports of its effects first spread on the deep web news network called the Mystic Underground a few years ago, when it was accidentally discovered by an amateur chemist attempting to create a more potent version of DMT. The reports were profound in their nature. The first few users who broke through experienced the essence of an independent multiverse inside their own mind. They were able to live out a series of events not as beings with egos but as sentient particles of subatomic matter. They could form and create entire chains of multiverses and live out generations upon generations of lifetimes as the beings who inhabited them. The power of this drug greatly surpassed DMT, which was thought to be the most powerful psychoactive substance prior to the discovery of synthite.

                The first wave hit Dennis like a freight train. His body began to tingle and then slightly warm up while his mind began to feel like a balloon inflating at an exponentially increasing velocity. Memories of his childhood flooded his mind but they now were severely altered. Instead of being pushed on his swing by a compassionate father, Dennis was being whip lashed around by a snarling belligerent demon with thick grey horns. The psychosis had begun. More visions followed. Dennis’s body grew ever warmer and his perception of his own mind continued to expand, faster and faster.

                Within moments Dennis found himself floating in deep space, completely disoriented. A cold void surrounded everything he perceived. Then the demon returned, only this time it was much larger, and it was laughing at him.

                “What do you want from me? Where am I?” Dennis asked. He felt an intense sickness grip his senses. 

                “I am your own interpretation of you,” said the demon. “Why so troubled?”

                “You’re not me!” Dennis yelled back. His eyes were bulging out if his head in a fit of panic. His arms and legs flailed around in a swimmer's motion as he desperately tried to find something to hold on to.

                “You have much to learn. Do you even remember taking the drug?”

                “What drug? What the hell is this? This isn't real!” said Dennis.

                Dennis truly forgot. He forgot that he had taken the most powerful psychedelic in the universe. He was at its mercy now. The demon continued in a calm and collected tone.

                “I have much to show you,” said the demon. “First you must let go of the part of you that is tortured. It doesn’t get any easier from here on out. This trip is just beginning.”

                “I’m not tortured… I had a good life… then I woke up here… in space.” said Dennis.

                “This is an illusion. Don’t be dense. You took a drug, remember?”

                “No, I don’t remember… at all.”

                “What I will tell you next will shock you, but I assure you that I am telling the truth. You’ve been on this drug your entire life, Dennis. None of your life actually happened. You were an astronaut and you smuggled some of this stuff into your suit during a spacewalk. There was some trouble. Your ship and crew abandoned you. Now you’re floating in deep space with only minutes left in your life support system.”

                Suddenly Dennis woke up on his couch. The change of scenery occurred in less than a second.

                Deep space.

  The demon.

                What happened?

                The chilling memory of what the demon said remained with Dennis as he was coming to his senses. His current life wasn’t real. He actually was still deep space, minutes away from death, tripping on synthite. Dennis then began to question himself. Which reality was actually true? If synthite was as powerful as the reports said, then he could be tripping right now in his clean modern apartment while his true reality is actually him drifting in space as a lost astronaut. He did seem to recall vague inconsistencies in his life, even strange flashes of white and purple light which occurred in his field of vision from time to time. Could they be small seams in the drug’s grip of his mind?

                To get some immediate answers Dennis took out his mobile phone and called his good friend Jack. There was some initial static in the call, which gave Dennis a sinking feeling of doom in his stomach. Eventually, however, Jack answered the call.

                “Hello.”

                “Hey, Jack. It’s Dennis. I’m having a bit of a struggle today…”

                “You need to stop tripping, man. What did you take this time?” said Jack.

                “It’s more of what I didn’t take,” said Dennis as he sunk into his couch.

                “What do you mean?” said Jack.

                “What is reality? Are we real?” said Dennis.

                “That’s a deep philosophical question,” said Jack. “No one truly knows what reality is, but I suppose this is as real as it gets.”

                “If your whole life has been you tripping on a powerful drug, how would you know in the first place? What if you simply died when the effect began to wear off?”

                “Hmm… are you sure you didn’t take anything. You sound tweaked, Dennis.” said Jack.

                He was right. There was a lot of panic and tension in Denis’s voice. Jack sensed that his friend was in deep psychological trouble.

                “Look, I’m at a store around your area. I’ll stop by with a case of beer. We can just hang out and relax, you seem to be struggling,” said Jack.

                “Hmm… sounds like a good idea. I’ll see you soon.”

                They both hung up their phones. Jack arrived at Denis’s apartment about twenty minutes later with a case of beer and a few bags of snacks.

                “Good to see you,” said Jack. “Man, you don’t look so good. Maybe it is time to give this psychonaut thing a rest? It is breaking you down pretty badly.”

                Dennis did not answer normally. Instead, he screamed and reached for the machete he kept in the hallway closet. Jack suddenly got uneasy.

                “Hold it, man… what… what… what! What are you doing?” Jack began to backpedal but he could not escape. One precise swing of the machete sliced into his stomach open and he collapsed to the floor, bleeding.

                “Get away from me!” screamed Dennis. He did not see Jack as his normal self. He saw him as the demon from earlier. “Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!” He screamed the phrase a few times while pacing around in circles. Jack was on the floor, bleeding out and shaking.

                “No more! No more! No more!” Dennis let out several more screams and then charged towards the biggest window in his apartment. His flailing arms hit several shelves, knocking down all of their contents. Without hesitation he let out a primal roar and jumped while leading with his shoulder. He broke through the glass and fell twenty one floors down to the concrete street. 

                

One Path Left to Go

One Path Left to Go (2017)

All my Life I have tumbled in the wind

All my life I have walked the path of sin

The storms of summer come and the blizzards finally go

But my own fate I'll never know

Read it in the papers that they're planning for a war

Extraordinary weapons that I've always abhorred

Will lay a lonely child to waste

His momentary pain will then pass away

The leaders of this nation in their manicured place

Claim I've done awful deeds of horrible disgrace

As they launch their bombs unto the towns

The parasites inside make people drown

They'll tear out their insides in a horrible display

Of chemical perfection made in a lab far away

With money that you and I have earned

We pay to see these children burn

People are freezing and starving in the street

We waste our lives toiling for corporate greed

United we can take a stand

Money'd devils won't give us commands

Another time, another place, the world might be ok

But not tomorrow, not today, while we all drown in pain

The wealthy have bought out all our souls

And we're chained down, just one path left to go