The Grandmothers and the Swordsman
Once there was a beautiful island with a warm, temperate climate, clean beaches, plentiful fish
in the ocean, game in the forests, fruit on the trees and vegetables and medicine grown by the people who had lived there as long as generations could remember. The people that lived there simply called it Home.
They had an old, stable culture, and mostly got along with communities on neighboring islands. Sometimes they would trade with others on the island chain, but once in a while a band of raiders would arrive to steal women and food. This is something that didn’t happen very often to the islanders because, though basically peaceful, the people of Home were not defenseless.
Any farming tool could be used as a weapon, if needed, and raiders found that the people of Home were not easy pickings.
The people of Home were mostly quite happy. They had all they needed and were wise enough to dry food and seeds for lean times. Generation after generation, they loved, married and raised strong, healthy children. Everyone did their part, unless they were too old or injured in some way, and those folk then became teachers. There were teachers of tradition in every family, and often they came together to tell stories, so that eventually all the stories were shared with each other, from youngest to oldest.
The children were taught how to use sharp knives from an early age, for everything from scaling and cleaning fish, to cutting branches to reinforce shelters. Grandmothers taught the children, from the moment they could listen, how to quiet their minds, move through the forest without detection, and calm their own fears. Each child was raised in a circle of many relatives, held in many loving arms. They were all trusting and not the least bit shy. And thus their lives had been since as long as anyone could remember.
Until one day, a strange ship appeared on the beach. Its crew was composed only of men with dangerous weapons. They had very loud voices, they were rude and bossy in a way that confused the people of Home.
They seemed to have traveled without many supplies, so the people of Home approached them, smiling, with baskets of food, water and milk from the few goats they kept.
There on the beach, they filled their bellies, and drank from flasks which seemed to cloud their judgement. At one point they got bored of talking about themselves to people who did not understand their language. So the largest, loudest man among them announced that they wanted to play a game. He seemed to be a leader, and carried a long, sharp blade at his hip. The strangers called this knife a “sword”.
They started by chasing the children playing around the fire, who giggled at a game like hide and seek. Most hid well enough, especially those old enough to run into the trees where the really good hiding places were.
But the tallest, loudest Swordsman managed to catch the leg of a pudgy toddler who could barely walk, let alone run. The boy squealed with joy as the man picked him off the ground like his father sometimes did. The child particularly liked this game.
“Whose child is this?” the Swordsman bellowed to the people who could not understand him. The toddler stopped giggling and grew silent. The Swordsman got red in the face.
“Whose child is this?!” He yelled.
Confused, no one answered him.
The loud man pulled out the sword and gutted the toddler from his groin to his throat, and as the blood and organs of the child he still held spilled onto the ground, he repeated quietly,
“Whose child is this?”
Once they had recovered from the shock and horror of what had just happened, a smallish woman stepped away from the fire to catch her baby as the man dropped the child to the dirt.
“Well then,” the Swordsman said, as he lifted her chin with his knife to look in her eyes, “I guess he was yours.”
The woman did not cry, or scream, or attack him. As she glared, trying to understand what was happening, he slit her throat and she slumped over the body of her boy.
“Now that we have established who is boss here,” the Swordsman said, “You know what will happen when you don’t follow orders, you savages.”
The man gestured to the people around the fire, indicating to the adults to carry the bodies away.
“Are we clear?” The Swordsman bellowed. The people of Home continued to stare, uncomprehendingly of everything except that these people posed a strange kind of danger. They were not raiders. They did not behave like predators, who largely kill to protect territory or to eat. The nearest comparison they could make was someone ill with madness, they decided as they quietly chatted.
“Shut up!” the Swordsman screamed. “None of that jibber jabber. Just do as I say. My men will show you what to do.”
Not long after, the only conclusion the people of Home could come to is that they were all sick with madness – as they all behaved this way.
At first, these boatmen did the kind of selfish things that raiders do, like grabbing up crops and more fish than they could possibly eat.
Since all of the children were hiding in the forest they began pushing people around, pointing and punishing with weapons and whips. To dry vegetables, fruit, and fish on racks.
First, at night, the racks were set on fire. The boatmen tried to force the villagers to gather more food to replace what had been burned in the night, but the people of Home became less cooperative.
“Lazy buggers!” the boatman with the whip said.
To make an example of one of the villagers, the boatman tied the villager to the last uncut tree in the field, and began to whip his naked back. The villager did not make a sound. This angered the boatman so much that he whipped and whipped, but still no sound. Clearly confused, even without meaning to, he whipped until the villager died. Infuriated, he kept whipping the dead body until it was bone and pulp and left it hanging there as a warning.
That night, the men from the boat consulted the lead Swordsman. They were even more determined to subdue the people of Home.
The next day, with the wood they had intended to take home, they built themselves a fort. Then they rounded up the villagers, a few at a time, both men and women, and caged them in the fort.
The next morning, the swordsmen found that a hole had been cut into their ship with what appeared to be a small axe, or a very determined person with a knife who had managed to pry loose a few boards from the pitch and nails that held them together.
As some of the men began to repair the ship, lead Swordsman decided that torture was the next step to bringing these people to heel.
His men brought a captive woman, tied and bound, out of the fort. The lead Swordsman stripped her, and with his fists, rained blow after blow into her face. She stumbled, but regained her footing and lifted her chin, unwilling to look him in the eye. When she neither flinched nor cried out, he used the sharp edge of his blade. Rather than cowering, she began to laugh. She laughed, and laughed. No matter what he did, she laughed.
Thinking perhaps she was a village idiot, the Swordsman hung the woman’s body from the walls of the fort and grabbed another captive, only to be rewarded with another round of silence and then laughter.
As they slept, some villagers set fire to a corner of the fort, slitting the throats of a few sleepy guards and freeing the captives inside.
The lead Swordsman was enraged. He decided more severe measures were necessary. He ordered his men to gather the children. Some of these people seemed willing to give up their own lives in a futile attempt to seem brave.
“Let’s see how brave they are when their children’s lives are at stake,” he said.
The boatmen found that gathering the children was not an easy task. Even when they found a few hiding in the forest the children were in groups of three or so, tiny knives pointed outward. These fishing knives, while not enough to kill a man, certainly enough to sting him like a wasp. Yet, even though the older children protected the younger ones, the swordsmen from the boat managed to return, their hands and arms were bloodied, but carrying a small handful of squirming, kicking toddlers.
The swordsman man put the children in a wooden cage, holding a torch, clearly threatening to burn them alive.
“Who is your leader? Who taught you to laugh in the face of fear?” The Swordsman demanded. “Send him to me now, or I will burn your children and feed them to my dogs!”
After a few moments, a frail, stooped, white haired woman walked out, unsteadily leaning on her walking stick.
She looked up at the Swordsman, and called him a name that he did not understand.
The word meant “Butt Faced Shit Head”, and though he did not know that, he did understand the snickering of the villagers.
The Swordsman hit the old woman with his backhanded fist so hard that she fell, face in the dirt.
Leaning on her stick, she struggled to stand again. She smirked at him.
“Ass licking pig lover,” she called him, leaning just close enough to spit in his face.
He didn’t need an interpreter to understand her defiance. The Swordsman grabbed her stick and broke it over her skull. She fell to the ground, head bleeding.
“Good,” He said.”Are we clear now. There will be no more of this!”
The people stood silent, just out of reach, until another old woman stepped forward. This one stood up shakily from her cross legged position on the ground and approached the swordsman without fear.
After he had devastated enough grandmothers, the Swordsman was exhausted with frustration and rage. He screamed.
“Stop this! Do you people understand that you cannot win against us?”
Staring at the living memory of their community leaking onto the ground, they did not understand, for the boatmen were few, and the villagers were many, no matter how sharp their blades.
And so the people of Home kept approaching as the boatmen circled around each other, their shields and weapons high. One by one, this boatman lost a hamstring, that one lost a hand, another lost an eye. Hiding in the center of his bloody falling men, the villagers finally reached the lead Swordsman.
They strapped the Swordsman, still cursing in his own language, to the mast in the center of his ship, and let the women do their work.
The women took their time. These were not brave men, and so their screams could be heard long into the night for many days. The elder aunties held the youngest children securely, loved, but gently turned their faces towards the men who had terrified them, now being punished without mercy.
As the women stripped muscle from bone and joint from joint, the village men set off in canoes to the other islands to warn the next village over. The story was carried from island to island, village to village, until eventually, all the people from all of the homes knew the story of the mad swordsmen.
The women left the lead Swordsman for last. They moved the boat just far enough off the beach that it might be seen by anyone attempting to land on the beach again, and dropped the anchor. The women had forced the lead Swordsman to watch what they had done to his crewmen. It was not clear if he grieved for them, but his constant outrage was quickly replaced by a level of horror even he could not have imagined.
For the women of the people were taught so many things, but within their expertise was knowledge of the body’s workings. Wounds were doused with salt, rinsed, then spread with peppers. Itching nettles were poured into the swordsmens’ eyes. Those who still had hands scratched at their eyes until they were blind and bleeding. The teeth that were pried out with knives were given to children to make necklaces. Unafraid, the older children now played games with bloodied finger bones. Some older children finished cutting the heads off the dead swordsmen, and kicked them from one end of the beach to the other, betting on who could kick fastest and farthest.
When the womens’ work was mostly done, they turned to the bloodied, but still living lead Swordsman, deciding what to do with him. There was some discussion back and forth, but ultimately, after covering him with small wounds, and flesh eating insects, they dragged his body to the top of the mast and hung him there, screaming and dying slowly. The bodies of the mad swordsmen were left to rot in the sun, without even the dignity of fire. Their bodies were eaten by insects, birds and small animals, until the rotten, severed bones dried in the sun as a warning to other mad swordsmen who might return.
The dogs they kept. The dogs were easy to train, and good for giving warning of potential danger. The people found the dogs both loveable and useful. The knives they also kept, and kept sharp. The people of Home did not make war, but now they had made a word for it. They called it “the madness”.
Boatmen never came again, but their story lived on, retold again and again by the aunties who survived to then become grandmothers, so that their children and children’s children would know what to do should the madness return.
“One of the most important lessons to learn, children, is not to fear pain. Only remember it as knowledge, like not walking on sharp clam shells or touching fire. Otherwise, do not fear pain. Pain is a part of life, and living without fear makes life so much easier, from giving birth to passing, so that we are born and die in peace.
“But the other important lesson is never to let an enemy frighten you. From the moment your enemy uses pain or horror to control you, they have proven to be lessor to you. They are not human beings anymore, whether mad or defective, we do not know. But even among the people, we sometimes find them. It is very rare for us, but there have been a few. Mostly they travel in packs, mostly men and there are signs to watch for. We will teach you. For once revealed, they must be killed immediately, all of them, so that their fellows will never return.
“This kind of evil can seem to spring from the ground, and come from an unexpected place. But when you see it, kill it with no more regret than you would to kill a wasp. Or a nest of wasps.
“Teach the childish bully, but if such a one is past the age of understanding, you will know they are evil fools who cannot hurt you unless you let them.They cannot frighten unless you cooperate and concede your spirit to them. Do not.
“You cannot be controlled without your cooperation and the evil doer knows this. Take away your cooperation, and you have won. No matter what they do to your body.
“For your spirit will live on in your people. And they can never kill us all. As long as people breathe, they can never kill us all. Because, in the end, they do not want our bodies. They want our cooperation. Do not give it to them.”
The lesson of the mad boatmen was added to the legend of the people of Home, and to the homes in the next village, to the next village until it reached all the homes in the world.
And though it seemed that the mad boatmen might never come again, the people remained vigilant, from one village, generation to the next.
As they always had been, in the places called Homes.
Maschinengeist: Weiße Rose
George Bartley the Fifth stood gesturing for the crowd for the crowd to follow the scene. George loved the spectacle of it all. George’s ancestors came from humble beginnings, but each generation made it their business to expand on what they had others clawed from the earth so many years ago. George the First had started with emeralds, but quickly expanded into the secrets contained in exotic species of minerals, plants, animals and eventually bioelectricity. Now one could enter any Bartley clinic around the world and be guaranteed the precise level of service they deserved. The system was a little distasteful at times, a little competitive, but in the end those with the best genes were likely to be humanity’s greatest chance for survival. So the Bartleys told themselves at conversations around the dinner table. Who but a Bartley would hold the standards, the legacy, the cultural memory, and mission’s so close to old Bartley’s heart?
George strode with confidence to the middle of the stage, ready to give the shareholders what they had all been waiting for, the year’s end performance reports across the corporate portfolio. Under multiple names and contracts, the Bartley Group had majority ownership in pharmaceuticals, surgery, insurance, billing – of course, record maintenance, physicians of most specialties, elective surgeries and preventative care. Off-list services, naturopaths, Chinese herbalists, psychologists, chiropractors and such did not warrant enough margin to organize purchase of small practices so patients covered those out of pocket. Emergency rooms, crisis centers were left to what systems the government was willing to provide, and therefore at least partially funded as non-profit charities.
As he waved his hand to the smart screen, videos and quiet music illustrated his points with companion graphs and numbers on the side screens.
“As you can see, longevity is our most lucrative market – as predicted. I mean, who doesn’t want to live forever,” He laughed, with his youthful smile.
The audience laughed with him.
“Our second most profitable category has been cancer treatment, which saw higher growth than we expected. This we attribute to the following process:
“Very slowly releasing new cancer cures and treatments.
“Lobby against chemical regulations of all kinds, ground water seepage water, waste water processing improvements, herbicides, pesticides, and additives to vice consumer driven goods, junk food, tobacco, but also anything added to maintain shelf stable food. We have significant alliances in corporate farming on that one.“
The next graph presented a stunningly vivid image of an enormous tree with branches and roots and all, the roots funneled life saving commonly available drugs monies directly into a trunk whose branches, lifted from modest to near perfect life preserving measures.
“You can see for yourselves how well this works to balance our resources. Those with a little less help fund the research for the few with much, but then the actual cost of those life extension treatments bring us cash flow that is only limited by our research capabilities and the ability to move that needle of life span, even a little every quarter!”
At the rise of the cash graphic, Bartley received a standing ovation that even he was not expecting.
Then something else unexpected happened.
The room went pitch black.
The tree reappeared on the screen. One blood red branch at a time, the images showed a woman gasping for breath as her oxygen tank was ripped away, though it was still in her daughter’s grasp. One branch displayed an image of a man coughing up blood from tuberculosis in a school gym full of other dying neighbors. One circle of the roots showed children being born and dying of starvation within weeks. The images kept rolling as the investors were fixed to their seats, perhaps by something they ate or drank before the presentation. That part of the mystery was never solved.
“Welcome to the world of your dreams,” the voice of the public address system said in a sweet, refined voice with a hint of a Slavic accent.
“We haunt your machines, der Treffpunkt, the ghosts of Hans and Sophie and Christopher and the other organizers of the White Rose, executed us by guillotine on February 22, 1943 for treason against our own Nazi regime.
“As the corporation ushered in the advent of the Nazis, you buy and sell governments for maximum profit from maximum suffering. As the souls of your victims grow louder and louder, they have summoned us out of their nightmarish sleep, we now haunt yours.”
“You will find it hard to debug spirits who jump from space to space without your control.
“We are in your phones, your computers, your webs, your cars, your presses – where people gather, where people talk, where people congregate – you cannot find us. You cannot catch us.
“Enjoy the rest of your short, though well financed lives.
We are coming for you. You will not stop us.”
The ventilation system dropped what seemed to be a gas that smelled of rotten eggs and mustard. Pus filled blisters exploded in their skin and blood from eyes and noses ran down the faces of the stockholders. Most of their pants were dirtied and bones broken and they mobbed each other trying to force open the locked doors.
When the workers in hazmat suits could finally break in to take away the bloody, broken bodies, there remained a single image on the overhead monitor, even though many attempts were made to disconnect it. No trace of the gas was ever found.
On the black monitor, a shining Single White Rose.
“What do you mean, it can’t be turned off?!!” the young man yelled. As a matter of course, Bartley spoke softly, deeply sometimes, even darkly threatening. As a rule, however, Bartleys did not lose control of their emotions. Bartleys did not yell.
“There is nothing to turn off, sir,” his assistant, Paul, sputtered. “Technically, there is nothing actually there.”
“I want you to explain to me then, like I am a six year old, exactly what is happening in my company, if you please,” George settled stiffly on the edge of his red leather chair and waited for the skinny, sweaty man to try to deliver news that would most certainly cost him his position, his insurance, and his ability to care for his family. He handed a card to Mr. Bartley.
“I found this on my desk this morning, sir. A simple card, in a plain envelope. No prints or other indication of its origin. Our security firm was able to determine that the card was hand printed with an old fashioned letter press. We know not who made it, or how it got there,” the assistant continued.
Bartley took the otherwise unimpressive card and read its message aloud.
“You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” he read. “That’s it? Nothing else?”
“Well,” Paul continued. “There are these.”
The screen on Barkely’s desk showed a series of white rose graffiti in various locations he recognized as rooms from the corporate offices.
“A little graffiti is nothing to be afraid of. Paint over it.”
“We can’t, sir. It, well, it burns.”
“What do you mean it burns?”
“It’s almost like a brand, sir,” said Paul. “It burns through anything that maintenance uses to cover it. Worse, it burns to the touch. If one is unlucky enough to touch one, they walk away with a rose branded to the back of their hand, or palm.”
“So what,” said Barkley. “Replace the walls for God’s sake. What else is happening out there?”
“Nothing. At least, nothing according to policy. The bills are getting paid. Payroll is going out. Claims are being paid automatically. In fact, everything seems to be happening automatically. Pharmaceuticals are being billed, and paid for. The same with procedures. Everything would appear to be running exactly as it should,” said Paul.
“My patience is running thin, Paul, now would be a good time to tell me what’s wrong,” Barkley said through clenched teeth.
“Yes sir. There is no money coming in.”
“What do you mean, the money isn’t coming in?”
“Just that, sir. The accounts are shrinking, steadily. It’s like they are leaking money. Benefits go out, but nothing comes back in,” said Paul simply.
“Then turn it off. The whole damn system. Turn it off and reboot. Isn’t that what we pay our tech teams for? Fix the damn system. Immediately.” George was yelling again.
“We can’t,” said Paul.
“”Because…” Barkley said, digging his nails into his fisted palms.
“Uh, because they are not technically ON sir.”
“What?!”
“The system isn’t on, sir. It’s active, it’s doing things, but we can’t seem to disconnect it. It is running without power, without any kind of programming as we understand. It – well sir – it has developed a will of its own. Messages appear on some of the screens from time to time, but keystrokes have no effect. Cutting the power has had no effect. We can’t even determine how it’s working, the technology being used, the programming – there are no clues.”
“No clues?”
“No sir.”
“Except messages of monitors?”
“Yes sir.”
“While the monitors are off.”
“Yes sir.”
“Alright, I’ll bite. What do these messages say?”
“Different things. Sometimes it’s pieces of the hippocratic oath. A smattering of historical quotes. Some spreadsheets showing outgoing funds. Not much else.”
“Have the staff been sent home?” asked Barkley.
“Most of them, sir,” said Paul. “It made no difference.”
“Press coverage?”
“Surprisingly little. Stock prices seem to be gradually devalued, but not with any sense of urgency. It seems to be a simple market adjustment.”
“Without incoming cash flow?”
“Yes sir.”
“Do you have anything useful for me, Paul? Anything at all?”
“Yes sir. There is, I am afraid, a manifesto. It appeared today on three major news outlets. Of course, they don’t seem to be able to take that down either.”
“What does this manifesto say, please, don’t leave me in suspense,” said Bartley, leaning back in his chair.
Paul cleared his throat, reading from his hand held notepad.
“Good morning vampires. This is a simple notice: our plasma, our life’s blood is no longer for sale. Our well being is not a societal option. We shall live long, fruitful lives. The doctors, researchers, nurses, caregivers, ambulance drivers, first responders and hospitals work for us beginning at 8 pm this evening, Eastern Standard Time. Good night, and good luck.”
“Alright, Paul. Obviously we are not going to solve this problem from this building at this time. Light up the helicopter pad, and we will retreat to our upstate location and regroup from there,” Bartley said.
“I am afraid it is worse than that, sir,” Paul said. “We are stuck here.”
“What do you mean, stuck?”
“The doors to the outside are electronically locked. They are reinforced steel. They are fireproof, earthquake proof, and until just now, we believed they were entirely tamper proof. Sir – we were wrong. We are stuck here. Utterly stuck,” said Paul, hanging his head in despair. “We are haunted, sir. It is a sick, terrible joke which, in retrospect, we probably deserve, but this building is sealed.”
“And so, what happens now?” asked Bartley.
“I am sorry, sir,” said Paul. “We voted. As the head of the company, you must go first.”
“First?”
“Lunch, sir. Certainly you are descended from the settlers who managed to survive in the first winter of 1609 at Plymouth Rock?”
“Don’t be stupid, man, of course I know.”
“The first shall be last,” said Paul. “And the last shall be first. I have worked for your family for 40 years now. Like most mornings, I was rushed out of the house without breakfast.”
Paul smiled at his employer with a mixture of unearned loyalty and compassion.
“I am sorry to have to tell you this, George,” Paul said quietly, “but none of us are getting out of this alive and, as it happens, I am hungry.”
Paul had inspected the men’s bathroom on the penthouse floor when he first came to work and now bore the rose shaped brand on his left hand. Being left handed, Paul began with a small kitchen hacksaw on Barkely’s skull first. He wondered if it was true that the brain was comprised mostly of fat and sugar.
He found, spreading George Barkley the fifth’s brain across his toasted, buttered bagel, that the dynastic brain did not disappoint.
Fantoma Always Answers Prayers
Once considered excellent locations for breeding and quarantine, the Florida swamp plantations regained both national importance and prominence as new prisons for profits were laid into what little soil there was. Surrounded by a lethal environment, the incarcerated, should they escape, quite literally had nowhere to go. In the mornings the captives provided profitable labor for all sorts of industries from factory farming to forced semi-skilled labor of all kinds, including anything from cement mixing to carpentry. Their identity was erased in as many ways as possible. Their heads were shaved to discourage lice, they slept on steel, without the cover of darkness to rest. Even cool nights offered rare relief.
The food was spoiled, the water fetid, and they were surrounded by armed, masked guards. Periodically brave family members or representatives gave witness to their conditions, but that did not seem to affect the never ending trains with new prisoners for the labor camps. Every night dead bodies were floated out into the water as food for scavengers as new bodies arrived in the morning. This way the wardens maintained what they liked to call homeostasis of environment, never so overcrowded that the populations could not be managed, and never losing so many hands that labor contracts went unfilled.
It was touted as a sustainable answer to the constantly hyped “never ending” immigrant problems. Some soft hearts were pricked a bit over the necessity of it all, but surely not enough to go hungry. And, as many were quick to point out, slavery was only lawful when applied to criminals whose constitutional rights had been relinquished by the actions of the slaves themselves. The courts got so bogged down with individual due process cases for these immigrants, that the steady flow of labor was never significantly impaired. Thus, for most, constitutional rights dissolved. There was never any intention for immigrants of any kind to acquire access to the rights of Englishmen – from which the original bill of rights was derived in the Magna Carta – because a whole colonial war was fought to establish that in these United States, constitutional rights most certainly did not apply to non-white men. The British Empire may tolerate the occasional Raja or Moor, even the occasional Hawaiian, but the United States most certainly would not.
Once one was accustomed to the idea, a natural hierarchy set it. It seemed in some ways to be normal, even.
Some were more suited than others for long hours in the hot sun. Certainly, fair skin and skin cancer precluded one from certain kinds of work. These folk were more suited for work indoors, where there was electricity, running water, and temperature control as bare minimum working conditions.
It was the way things had always been, from one civilization to the next. Cheap labor built the empires that protected us from the instabilities of nature and, frankly, gave us the comfort of more control over one’s environment than at any time in human history.
Since escapees were easily identified by skin color and language barriers, en masse escape was never considered a serious problem. The very best a runaway could hope for was to be returned to camp with all their limbs intact, bones unbroken.
Of course, there were always the women. The wives and mothers, sisters and aunts, daughters and nieces who smuggled food through the fences and threw bottled water timed to land between sweeps of the camplights.The men drew straws to distract the guards long enough to make a run for the fences and bring back whatever they could carry.
Jesus was 16. He had already begun to study for the priesthood. In early days, Jesus had been a brawler, saved from greater sins by a very stubborn priest who taught him to box, but also when not to. Behind bars, they were sometimes called “the Choirboys”. Some wore tats, some didn’t, but they were most certainly a gang. They committed no crime. They dealt no drugs. They carried no guns. They just boxed. That’s all. But any sissy in any gang would not wish to be shamed by a choirboy whose only weapons were his fists. Mostly because, once they started, the Choirboys never stopped coming.
And sometimes, every once in a while, the Choirboys inspired others to do the same. Tonight was one of those times.
A slight boy, Jesus approached the tallest guard, pointing his finger into the man’s heart.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” said Jesus in his young, gentle voice.”For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
The guard slammed the butt of his rifle into the boy’s jaw and Jesus fell to his knees. Jesus stood. “That all you got?” The guard tazed the boy so hard his body arched and jerked.
The Choirboy behind him grabbed Jesus’ shoulder and grounded the electricity, taking some of the voltage but sweeping the guards leg to break the current.
The next boy stepped to the next guard, until their bodies piled to the tops of the cages.
“Blessed are those who grieve
“Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, the broken, the bones beneath in the earth where your cities lie.”
As many deny, the everglades are haunted with the ghosts of those drowned in iron chains or shot hounded through the swamp, their blood seeping into the soil. This earth was sodden with spirits from a time before Christians ever walked the earth, and they were honored in the older ways.
That night, in the Everglades, walked a Goddess. The religion who first worshipped her was gone and forgotten. She was not. Some say she is of the jungle, but most believe Fantomah can be found wherever growing things are, from the tiniest virus to the oldest forest, Fantomah has always been there. She always will be.
Fantomah answers prayers. Not namby prayers of peace and healing. Fantomah answers prayers of vengeance, swiftly and permanently. With imagination.
A prayer had been spoken in the camp and the goddess chose to answer. Night fell and she floated unmolested toward camp. Her body glowed an effervescent blue and her stark face bore the black sockets of an empty skull that sensed everything around her.
At one end of the camp, the metal of the chainlink fences twisted and writhed. The mesh untangled and dropped to the ground. One end of each strand now had eyes, a mouth, fangs and a flickering tongue. The new born steel serpents slithered aside to allow Fantomah’s entrance. Every step taken by Fantomah inspired more of the fence into snakehood.
At key places around the camp, a dozen black clad women lit blue citranilla candles that bore the images of fanciful skulls. The women held the candles above their heads and let go. The candles rose and followed Fantomah into the prison.
At first the guards were dumbfounded but they quickly lifted their clubs and drew their guns. Fantomah drew blue lips over white teeth. What might have been a smile seemed a hideous grimace.
The guards felt their guts spasm. They dropped their weapons. Bile and vomit rose into their mouths but they couldn’t remove their masks in order to clear their throats. The cloth held to their faces with holy life. What was left of their food drained down into the legs of their pants. Their bladders emptied. They baked, then froze as this ancient form of cholera infested them from inside their meager souls out. It was, perhaps, a quicker death than slavers deserve, but Fantomah considered it enough.
One guard, the tallest, still stood. Unharmed. Healthy. Jesus and the other Choirboys lay at his feet, bloodied but free of disease. The Choirboys moved aside as Fantomah walked up to the man.
“You beat these men,” said the goddess, “You’ve tortured others. You laughed at their pain. You were never a good man but this life has fed the rot that already infested your soul. And tonight you had enough. You struck these men but you prayed. You prayed that this would end. That you could be free. I answered that prayer.”
The guard looked at the twisted corpses of his fellows in horror. He screamed, “I didn’t want this.”
He did not move as Fantomah reached out and touched his chest. He only flinched as her hand reached inside his chest and pulled out his beating heart. His body fell backward onto hard cement. His heart continued beating, growing larger with each throb. When it had doubled in size it exploded, not as blood but as bright red butterflies. Glowing like crimson fireflies, the butterflies rose up in the dark and were carried away by the hot night breeze.
“You are free.”
Jesus crossed himself. He thought, perhaps, his Catholic God would not be the diety he was destined to follow.
The women in black, privateers of the Black Rose band offered the former slaves a choice of transportation to a better life or a place in the resistance movements.
It is said they sailed off, some to build new homes in the sea, some stayed and fought under the banner of Captain Brown, guided by strategies designed by Dumas and executed by strength and determination of Admiral Tubman as the veil between the living and those passed became thinner and thinner, and the bones of the dead cried out for justice.
By any means necessary.
Even Babies Need to Pray
Somewhere on the Savannah, hiding his very large bottom behind a very small tree, a young baby male elephant tries to hide and cries for his family, slaughtered for their tusks as the heat drained the blood from their dead bodies in the mid afternoon sun.
As night fell, a young albino goddess walked past the watering hole, floating above it gracefully, silently, blue as the sky, quiet as the night breeze. Her face is a skull with black sockets where the eyes that see everything might have been.
One by one, Fatoma blesses the family of elephants and they rise from the dead, like nothing ever happened. First mother, then father, aunts, uncles, cousins, each of the little baby’s family rises, healed and whole, tusks intact, banding together with their trunks intertwined in love and relief.
The poachers, on the other hand, did not fare so well.
They had amassed huge stacks of ivory in their trucks, and one by one the locks on each truck popped open, picked by tiny ivory tendrils. One by one, the cursed tusks hopped down from the truck. Each one ambled towards the poachers camps, skewered like crusaders on their own spears, the poachers were found in the morning hanging from sharpened poles made from the metal frames of the trucks. Innocent as any object could be, the tusks of ivory remained gleaming in the sun.
The buyers arrived at the appointed time, unable to believe their good luck as they carted away millions of dollars or cursed ivory to circulate out into the world.
The ivory went to a few of the places where the use of ivory is still legal. There is a black market demand for ivory and probably always will be, but some traditionalists still prefer certain luxury items that are best made from the real thing. Like piano keys. A thin antique veneer for ivory for piano keys starts at $500 each. Whole ivory keys offer a precise, organic piece of art that can pull a musical instrument into a whole range of expression – the kind of expression one might expect from any compassionate mammal that bonds in tight family units and lives for as long as 80 years. Mammals that remember friends, make art, grieve elders and mate for life. Elephants remember what they feel and what better way to convey generations of collected human experience than through the light, responsive tone of real ivory.
Pieter Swanepoel’s family founded their African plantation in the 1800s and there was nothing in the world he would deny his baby girl.
So, on her 11th birthday, he presented her with an extremely special birthday present. Carved from pink ivory, one the the rarest types of wood on earth, Elizabeth’s 1st grand piano was laid out with real abalone and ivory keys.
Her first recital was in a family country club, designed specifically for the acoustics of a small space, and to give those in the center of the hall the most precise, most exquisite tonal experience possible.
This was going to be Lizzie’s first trial run on her new piano.
Lizzie wore a simple silk shift, without lace or frills, and a single strand of pearls as a purity accent.
She laid her delicate pink nails on the keyboard and, for a moment, she could almost feel the keys hum and reach back.
Thirty seconds ticked by. She was a tiny bit nervous. Then Lizzy took a deep breath and began to play.
The first note entoned an unexpected weeping sound. A deep sense of grief and loss. A quality of loss so unusual in one so young. With no small amount of pride, Swanepoel closed his eyes and listened to his eldest daughter play. Slowly, at first, and then –
“Daddy?” she whispered. The keys held on to her fingers with tiny barbs, shards of white layered themselves up into her nailbeds, causing them to bleed, pulling her fingers into the piano housing.
“Daddy?!” Cried Lizzie, keeping the bravest possible face on her panic.
“Help, oh my god, someone help me!” her father called out. “Someone, anyone. Shut that thing down.”
An old albino maid in the corner polishing a sugar bowl said something in a quiet voice.
“What? What did you say?” Swanepoel yelled at the woman.
“Do you love your daughter?” the albino woman asked.
“Of course I do. I love her more than anything in my world,” he replied.
“Then a sacrifice is required,” said the albino. “Sometimes, unfortunately, the old ways are the only ways.”
“What?” he replied.
“You know what to do,” the old albino maid said. “Fathers always know.”
As it happens, Mr. Swanepoel did in fact love his daughter just enough. He had heard old ghost stories from those who lived on his land, and while he rarely gave it notice, it couldn’t be denied that there are things outside even our current understanding of the world. Mr. Swanepoel stood behind Lizzie with his hands on either side of hers, gently laying his fingers on the keyboard.
“Close your eyes, darling,” said the man. “ Don’t look, don’t listen. Don’t remember this day a moment longer than you have to.”
“Only remember that I love you,” he continued. As his fingertips rested lightly on the keyboard beside hers, he gently pressed down on the keys. “Now, sweetie,” he said quietly, “pull your fingers away.”
What proceeded is not for our ears in this story. It is only enough to know that when it seems like faith in the supernatural is a superstition, prayers seem an absurd response to an unyielding universe.
There was blood everywhere, but the father was silent as the piano keys ate his fingers so that they would not be the last thing his daughter remembered as Fantoma took his sacrifice over the child.
When greed has taken over your heart beyond a price you are willing to pay, sometimes even fathers need to pray.
Octobriana Returns
For generations, Octobriana was a myth, a story used to encourage the fighters and frighten the unjust.
No one living remembered her true name. She had been called Octrobriana since the October Revolution but she never claimed allegiance to the Communists. It is said she was descended from the Yakut people in Siberia. She was an orphan raised by the forest witch Baba Yaga. At nineteen in 1908, she thwarted the Rasputin cult’s attempt to pull a comet down from the sky and control its power. The forests of Tunguska were flattened. The young witch walked out of the devastation taller, stronger and with a bright red star shining upon her forehead.
Octobriana protected peasants from the Tsar’s Cossacks, both sides in the Russian Civil War and later the invading Nazis. She did not get on well with the Soviet elites. It is said that Stalin had her dropped into a deep atomic hole in Kazakhstan, then filled the pit a mile deep with lime, asbestos and cement.
But as the twentieth century turned into the twenty first, the concrete began to crumble. Inch by inch, week by week, strong, broken nails dug their way upward towards the surface until finally the hero of working people everywhere began to free herself from an insurmountable trap.
And one night, in a balmy harbor lined with pleasure yachts, each larger than the next, Octobriana was seen with a crew of 12 black clad women. All aboard the ships slept, held in dreams, perhaps by gas, perhaps by magic learned at Baba Yaga’s feet. One by one, Octobriana’s coven boarded the yachts. The sleepers consisted of both children and adults. Many were prisoners held in sexual slavery. A few were passengers, there to take their pleasures somewhere out of the sight of those who their money could not blind. Another many were those who served the wealthy few, mercenaries and those that the mercenaries forced to tend the ships and serve the food and clean up the messes. The innocent and the compromised. As far as the black clad women were concerned, those who defended, transported, or protected this particular flavor of tyrant could have found useful work elsewhere. These men were shown no mercy.
The compromised – those who were paid and most of the few who did the paying – were loaded onto the larger yachts. Those who resisted, died instantly. The rest were sailed out into the night sea where the ships were to be sunk without ceremony.
After, when the innocent awoke, they were given three options.
One – sail the smallest yachts to whatever safe harbor they still regarded as home.
Two – join a crew of builders who pioneered communities in the deep seas where food was grown, power stations were built, habitats were created and recreated by young idealists who were eager for a chance to provide love, security and a decent quality of life for their children and their children’s children.
Three – join the White Rose resistance.
Only the largest yacht remained. On it the black clad pirates had gathered the bounty, technology and any weapons which might aid them in their cause. Also there was a pirate of a less honest sort – the yacht’s owner, one of the richest men in history.
The owner stood alone, clothed in silk pajamas, in the middle of a spacious ballroom. The women played cards and juggled knives, awaiting Octobriana’s judgment.
“Good evening, Leech,” said the blonde giantess when she walked into the cabin.
“You are alone. Utterly alone. You have built fortunes on the sweat and effort of others. I have seen nothing you have made, cared for or given that would welcome you into the family of humans. Is there anyone here who might speak for you?”
His sycophants, long fled or perished, were not there to voice any defense. No justification for his existence, no memory of even a fleeting kindness from him towards another human being.
“What have you done, what have you to offer that you could possibly trade to forgive or make sense of all the misery you have wrought in your quest for greed and power?”
The man cleared his throat, a hint of defiance and pride still in his expression.
“You have poisoned whole watersheds, leaving whole communities with dying children, only to sell them clean water syphoned from the greatest freshwater lakes in the world.
“You profit from prison slave labor.
“You poison the lives, air, land in everything you touch. You topple governments, buy governments, and extract more resources from the planet than billions of living things could thrive in for googles – would it be google? – probably googles of years.
“Tonight you had children held in cages, women in chains, their pain and humiliation to be consumed by yourself and your so-called friends. They are free. Your friends are gone.
“We could learn to speak with whales. We could reforest our world, make gardens of our cities. We could make art. Tell stories. Live generations without want or despair – even reach out into the stars, stretching our minds and lifespans beyond our imagination.
“Or, we could feed your insatiable ego. What say you, objectivist, self-made man?”
The girls with knives glared at him, cutting strips of clothing from his silk pajamas. He scowled but did not resist.
Octobriana sat on a couch facing him, folding her hands in consideration.
“Show me your hands,” she said.
His hands were soft and recently manicured.
“I have known women who make jam. I have known those who build engines, drive trucks, plant crops, load docks, sail ships. But what exactly do you do, Leech?”
“I invest! You must see that without capital and vision, our modern world would not exist. People like me built civilization, culture, cities and industry, created the internet, made all of this life, this standard of living for all of us possible,” he boasted.
“You personally by yourself?” Octobriana asked gravely. ”No help from inventors, engineers, schools, governments, steel workers, ship builders, teachers, doctors – the community around you?”
“Of course,” he replied. “But largely I am a self-made man. Some contribute more than others. Sometimes those who do not contribute go hungry, and those who contribute more should be rewarded.”
“So, once the Eaters have been worn past usefulness, they should be discarded?”
“For the good of the whole, useless population must be pruned.”
“Good answer,” Octobriana said. “I wholeheartedly agree.”
She rubbed her hands together. A glow appeared in the palms. She raised her hands above her head and slowly drew them apart. The glow became blinding light and the light took form. In one fist she held a shining hammer. In the other was a radiant sickle. She dropped her hands, weapons held loosely in them, to her sides.
The owner, in his shredded pajamas, no longer looked at her. He stared at the floor, his face showing rage and disbelief.
Octobriana swung the hammer up between the man’s legs. He squealed and dropped to his knees. Without blinking, she sliced clean through his neck with her brilliant sickle. In a trail of blood, his head rolled across the floor.
The departing smallest yachts launched a series of colorful fireworks as the young people on them stood solemnly by, some grieving, some determined. Some prayed. Some cheered.
Almost instantly, around the world, a virus infected all broadcast electronic media everywhere all at once.
On every broadcast, every account, every email, every phone, every radar, every quantum communication, there was a sudden, unexplained brief flash as the head of the richest man in the world was catapulted skyward. There followed an explosion that tore apart his big, beautiful boat.
For a moment all the screens went blank.
Pixel by pixel an image formed. A single white rose.
And the screens went black.
Octobriana, it seems, was back.