Do You Remember?

by J.R. Blackwell | Jul 5, 2007 | Story

Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer

Do you remember when I bought that old theater, sold my house and lived in the basement with the rats and the roaches and the scuttling things that I couldn’t identify? Do you remember before I got too bitter to kill those things, when I let them chew at the woodwork, when I ate one meal a day, always dinner always at someone’s house, some part time actor with a real job that paid for me to eat, or when I lived, lover to lover, each of them paychecks for me to breathe and eat and work on with, me and one of those computers you held on your lap, not in your hand, on your lap and worked and worked, when an internet connection was something I’d pay more for than food, when it was something you could steal?

I scrubbed that old theater. I scrubbed it with old t-shirts down on my hands and knees between every aisle, scrubbed the bottom of those cherry seats, all two hundred of them, till each one of them, dented or cracking, shined for me, my indoor orchard.

Remember my signature suit, the one I stole from the donation box of the goodwill so I wouldn’t have to pay the five dollars for it inside? Remember cash money and the way it felt like cloth and paper all at once? Cartoons never got paper right in those days, like being drawn on paper meant somehow that you couldn’t draw paper.

Do you remember the men who smelled like patchouli and wore sandals and laughed and cried all in the same night, both of us laughing and crying with them riding their emotions like a drug? Do you remember the boys who looked like girls who loved boys who looked like men? Do you remember Ronald, after he went off to the global war, and the way he looked when he came back, the metal and plastic in his chest blowing and humming its war tune though his body? Do you remember staying up till those cold blue dawns, Ronald still shirtless, playing drinking games, playing truth or dare moving past screwing and drugs and deviation till we asked, hey, has anyone here ever killed, and Ronald raising his hand and bringing that silence to the theater, that big, full, quiet, strong and loud as any applause. All those giant emotions swirled around in my drinks back then, oceans of drink.

Do you remember the greasepaint and the girls who smelled so sweet that I thought they would stick to my hands, that they would rub off on me, into me? I remember loving every single one of them, falling in love every night of a show, each show a fever. I was the starving delirious kind of all that magic. Remember how the cops threw me out of my own theater because it wasn’t residential, or how pest control shut us down for a week before a show? Do you remember the way that I begged and pleaded with everyone I knew who had part time jobs, who had money, who knew money, to give me some so that I could spend it on that old breaking theater?

Do you remember when they came with their little boxes, those cheap squares that could make the little machines that would scrub floors, repair chairs, fix and mend? Do you remember how we cracked them open to see how they worked, had them make us all food out of the rats and the show bills that was barely food, but we knew we wouldn’t have to worry about eating anymore? Do you remember when the girls started to freeze-dry, to turn into plastic at sixteen, so that no breast ever sagged, no wrinkle ever folded? Do you remember feeling like a pedophile the first time you slept with one? Do you remember when the men stopped running off to war and played at it from home like a game? Do you remember how the new people, that new guard said that we were missing all the art because it wasn’t here anymore, it wasn’t wrapped up in the tangible?

Am I old that I don’t want to move my body to a tank? Am I old that I want to scrub my cherry seats and smell my greasepaint? Have I missed the train to the next world, an old guard, and a relic of past time, a giant on whose shoulders a castle is standing? I do not understand the intangible world of numbers and glow in the world made of those bright young minds. But I am not lost. I do remember, children, I remember before, and I will learn to share with you, so that you can carry my memories with you.

Into Darkness

by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 4, 2007 | Story

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Letchen moved slowly but steadily through the dense jungle. In his right hand spun a blade, broad, flat and wickedly sharp, tethered by a length of cable. Even though the modified nunchaku cleared a wide path through which to walk, the more violent foliage still tore at him, leaving welts and open wounds on exposed flesh. In his other hand Letchen held a blunt nose automatic, always at the ready.

He’d inherited the blade from a mentor, a three year native who’d shown him how to track game meat for the outpost. They hunted together for months before becoming separated during one perilous expedition. Letchen had found the blade, discarded in a pool of blood. He never found his friend’s body, but he’d chased his killer for days, tracking it relentlessly before cornering the beast, exhausted and mortally wounded near the fresh carcass of another. He tore it apart in a wild fit of revenge fueled anger.

Thrashing ahead drew his attention, as the dark form of his quarry tore across his path. Letchen broke into a sprint, veering onto the trail partially cleared by the frightened beast. They’d been coming closer to the compound lately, becoming more brazen and frightening the station inhabitants, but to Letchen that just meant a hundred kilos of game meat he didn’t have to carry nearly as far. The creature screeched over its shoulder at him, black lips curled back from massive white teeth. It leapt into the air, arms extended, grasped a low hanging vine and began pulling itself hand over hand towards the canopy, curling it’s legs upwards to clutch with it’s hand-like feet, accelerating its ascent. Letchen raised his weapon and fired, the thunder-crack setting off a cacophony of sound as every other living creature nearby took notice. The wounded beast stopped, struggled futily to maintain its grip before letting go, falling hard to the ground where it lay motionless. Letchen closed the distance quickly, and with a sweeping overhead strike, decapitated the beast. He wasn’t taking chances, and it would save him carrying twenty meatless kilos he couldn’t eat.

He wrestled the carcass into a sitting position, and pulling one carbon black arm down over his own chest, and hooking his other arm through its legs, he managed to shoulder his kill and stand. Letchen started what he knew would be a long slow trek back to the compound, warm blood oozing down his back as the beast bled out, the fluid mingling with the blood of his own wounds.

The walk was arduous at first, but gradually he felt reenergized, his stride lengthened and he found himself almost bounding through the dense greenery. The carcass on his back must have bled out completely, as it felt almost weightless now. Letchen leapt at a low hanging vine, grasping it with his left hand and letting momentum carry him off his feet through several meters of jungle. His adrenal glands undoubtedly had gone into overdrive, he’d never felt this invigorated after a hunt before.

He could see the walls of the compound rising up through the jungle and he broke into a sprint. The relative calm was suddenly shattered by a barrage of gunfire, tracer rounds flashing past him, large calibre slugs masticating the dense jungle. Letchen opened his mouth to yell as the gunner paused to reload, but no words escaped, just a screeching sound that chilled him to the bone. Letchen stared at his outstretched arm, noticing for the first time the blackening of his skin, and the fluid rippling of the muscle straining beneath it. His cells were flooded with new commands, but the overpowering one now was ‘run’. The headless carcass fell to the ground, as a newly heightened survival instinct drove Letchen to abandon his kill and his weapons and flee upwards into the trees, and into utter darkness.