Tin Universe Monthly? #18
Page 3
and rushed to clear the debris that they had put up earlier to protect themselves from the weather.
When they got the debris cleared it revealed to their eyes to the sight of a figure standing in the snow storm winds wearing a bear skin snow suit. The fur was grey and the head of the bear formed a mask with the man’s eyes looking through its eyed out slots. It was cool in a great fashion should be based on Texas Chainsaw Massacre sort of way.
Not that I like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s realism from a movie like that which I find boring in stories.
The man in the bear skins stepped into the hull of the plane. Ian and Jeremy noted to themselves internally how big this man was. He had to be at least six foot in height and shoulders like shoulder pads on a lineman for the Denver Broncos.
‘There’s an old shelter nearby that an order of monks use. I can take you there to wait out the storm and call for help.’
Walking through snow is like walking through water but more solid.
That’s my education showing through right there.
When walking in snow the cold slowly makes its way up from your feet to your legs with each step you take. It can be like someone slowly inserting hot pins under your skin.
Ian may have marched through snow once as a child losing two toes in the process but this was another level of cold, another level of snow storm.
Jeremy had never experienced anything like this. The cold was making him feel his heart beats like a pushing from inside his chest.
All three of them trekked through the snow storm for thirty or forty minutes that felt like two hours. Ian and Jeremy didn’t have time to think how strange this man was or where he had come from because the only supplies they had found in the plane was the pilots stash of Kit Kat bars.
Anything had to be better than where they were.
But even though this was a situation of slight hope they had better reach that location of slight hope pretty quickly because they didn’t really dress for this sort of cold weather. They dressed for a Colorado winter, not a Siberian winter.
They walked behind the man in bear skins the whole way from the plane following his foot prints, heads down because they didn’t have anything to protect their faces.
They took this footstep after footstep approach until they found themselves standing in front of a rocky hill covered in ice and snow but behind the ice and snow barely visible was a wooden door.
The man in the bear skins noticed his new found friends staring, ‘The ice freezes over the door five minutes after someone has passed through.’
‘What do we do, do you have anything to chip at it with?’ Ian screamed against the winds.
‘We stand here until someone sees us and breaks through to let us in. There is always someone near the door and since its warmer inside it’s easier to bust through from that side.’ Said bear skin guy.
At that moment they noticed the door opening inward and through the ice they could see a blurred image of man with an ax slowly attacking the ice. And he did that until it shattered away leaving an opening into the structure.
Then a group of monks in monk attire, you know robes and sandals and… well robes and sandals, they hurried all three of them inside and shut the door behind them.
Right away Ian and Jeremy could feel how much warmer it was inside than it was out within the storm. There had to be something doing that because an inside fire was impossible and central heating was highly unlikely. Almost instantly they started to get really hot. It gave both Ian and Jeremy a dizzying feeling.
Jeremy noticed the bear skinned guy going off with one of the other monks. No one was talking to anyone else. He was thinking maybe they had all taken a vow of silence or something but then the question was how come they were so friendly with his new bear skinned friend?
Jeremy and Ian were taken deep into the temple before Ian could bring his question up to his friend. Right now both of them were just happy they were starting to feel their feet and hands again.
The monks led them to a door and opened it and steam poured out. So much steam that it blocked their vision at first.
One of the monks motioned for them to enter, ‘The springs will warm your bodies.’
‘Springs?’ Jeremy
‘That would explain the heat,’ Ian
‘Put your clothes on the sitting rocks and they will dry,’ One of the monks told them as he walked away.
Ian and Jeremy look at each other and shrugged. The monks shut the door behind them. They stripped off their clothes and climbed into the springs waters. The waters hurt a little at first as can happen with freeze burn cases but as the warm waters made them feel better safe smiles came across their faces.
I once had a friend and he had a quote he set his whole life on, “Don’t trust any sort of religious person that offers you a bath.”
That was actually completely true.
I have strange friends.
Friends who have lead very different lives from most people.
Ian and Jeremy had barely moved since sinking into the waters of the hot springs. Like beef in a slow cooker, the longer they laid there the more everything from their past drifted away. They were living in the safe moment.
That can get you killed sometimes.
‘I don’t know how happy I am about sharing a bath with you but this feels great,’ Ian
‘Survival has no time for homophobia,’ Jeremy
‘I didn’t know you were gay so shut the fuck up,’ Ian
‘Wonder if they have any sort of phone?’ Jeremy
‘I would guess no. Maybe they dog sled to the nearest outpost?’ Ian
‘I don’t care. Right now I only hope these monks are the making wine type of monks,’ Jeremy
‘Now that I’m not worried about my dick freezing off I’m thinking more about this place,’ Ian
‘Thinking about what?’ Jeremy
‘Maybe this place is the source of the radiation?’ Ian
‘How?’ Jeremy
‘Natural forms of radiation are being discovered all the time these days with the newer technologies we have,’ Ian
‘Then do you think we could be in danger being here? Am I going to grow extra ears or anything?’ Jeremy
‘No, the radiation levels we were sent to investigate haven’t been dangerous to anything so far. You get worse exposure by the way of your cell phone and TV. We’re safe,’ Ian
Without any sounds of warning four monks burst into the room. They put tie string hoods over the heads of Ian and Jeremy before they could even turn around to see what was happening, and then they dragged them out of the water.
The monks dragged them wet and naked out of the room, down the hall, and then into separate rooms.
Nothing worse than the terror that can come out of a rested moment of hope.
Ian was taken into a room that to him smelled like garlic. He could hear muffled sounds. He couldn’t tell if it was the monks talking or his own whimpers of panic.
Jeremy was dragged into a room of burning candles but he didn’t know that. What he smelled instead was scent. The scent of wax but more overwhelming was the scents along the lines of an incense store.
Both of them were in those rooms with her heads covered with so many thoughts going through their heads. Thoughts that ranged from they had somehow stumbled onto some sort of military base, scenes from horror films, and thoughts of being raped. But nothing, not one thought approached what was about to happen to each of them in turn.
I took a cooking class once at a local Y.M.C.A. I was living in Vancouver at the time. The classes’ teacher was rather unusual and not just because he was Canadian and not just because he once told us he had a great recipe for jerked werewolf; which generated a fair number of masturbation jokes after class from idiots such as myself.
The thing that put the unusual into this usual teacher was his hat. He wore a circus ringmaster’s hat, and not just in class but all the time. One time I saw the guy at a gas station filling up his Vo
lkswagen Beetle, there was the ringmasters hat right there on his head during a normal raining Vancouver day.
I told you this story because about a year later he was arrested for poisoning people while working at a restaurant. I bring this up to discuss the fact that the relation between food and killing, no matter who is doing the eating, and what is being eaten is a clear line and that’s why eating some things can give you more strength and power than others. That’s also why eating some things are more accepted and forbidden in different cultures.
Any power that can be obtained from the eating of anything is all about the power we bestow on the eating of said thing through its acceptance and forbiddance.
It’s like a self-fulfilling power gain.
Ian could smell a lot of herbs and spices in the room as they strapped him onto the table. The strange thing was his mind had drifted from horrible things dominating his thoughts to his mind being dominated by thoughts of being naked in the room.
In a way being strapped down naked without any movement being allowed by the ropes, now that created a lot of fear inside him.
Fears of sexual assault, fears of memories, fears that were completely taking over his mind.
But naked was at the hinge of all of this. He just wanted more than anything else to cover up somehow.
But he would forget he was naked soon enough.
They pulled off his hood, pulled his head back and forced him to drink something that tasted of sugar. Ian thought it was a similar taste to Dr. Pepper but mixed with some sort of alcohol.
Like Sam’s Club Dr. Pepper…what’s that called...?...
Oh, yea, Dr. Thunder.
Always sounded like a DJ name to me?
Though the drink they forced him to swallow down tasted of something manufactured and modern it was in fact a very old mixer that has been used by different groups of people throughout history to put themselves or others in a very deep but still awake and aware trance.
The mixture has been used by armies for such things as amputations. Used by religious orders for dream journeys, you know walkabouts, soul expeditions. And also used by the truly ruthless and evil to twist minds, to watch long bouts of suffering, and to turn humanity as a concept of caring into a job.
Within minutes Ian’s vision blurred with the last thing he saw before going into a half alive, half dead trance, being the sight of a monk with a very big knife leaning against a really large sharpening stone.
His head bobbled around his shoulders as he tried to stay in control of his thoughts and he finally got a full view of where they had taken him.
It looked like a kitchen.
It was a kitchen.
IT WAS A KITCHEN!
Cue Twilight Zone surprise ending music.
You know that Y.M.C.A. I spoke of earlier? I took more than a few classes there and each one had a story or two I could tell you from the experience. Another one that comes to mind right now as I try to get my brain into writing this next section was when I took a class on jewelry making.
I once made a necklace out of a glass eye I found at a flea market, probably wasn’t real but let’s pretend some old guy tired of looking at the world sold it…no traded it for some big tube socks or one of those cheaply airbrushed political shirts they love to sale at dirt malls.
I lost the glass eye necklace to a one legged lady who I once saw kick a fatman’s ass.
And I do mean kick.
No joke there, just truth.
She asked if she could have it and I said ok.
I didn’t want my ass kicked too.
This relates to Jeremy’s situation because it may seem extraordinary but in fact one legged ass-kickings happen more often than you would think.
They pulled Jeremy’s hood off after chaining him into a rock shaped into a chair with metal loops fashioned into the chairs arms and legs.
Though it was quite warm inside the temple, the cold of the stone against his bare skin sent a shiver throughout his body.
Or maybe it wasn’t the stone that caused that shiver, maybe it was the instinctive natures that humans stupidly ignore.
The monks left him alone for what seemed to him to be a very long time and he heard Ian’s screams for that whole allotment of time. About 15 minutes in it came into his head as long as the screams continued Ian had to still be alive.
They hadn’t development any sort of friendship but he was Jeremy’s only connection to the world he knew. He didn’t want him to die because more of his hope of surviving this would also die with him.
Then the screams stopped and almost as if on cue the moment Ian’s screams stopped the monks reentered the candle room.
‘What did you do to Ian?’ Jeremy shouted.
‘Your friend will be many meals for us. Most useful.’
For a few minutes Jeremy thought his heart stopped. This couldn’t be real raced through his head before he lost control of his emotions and started violently struggling to get free but finally gave up and just screamed obscenities at the monks before returning from rage and almost blacking out, ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked.
‘We shall pull and turn your bones to see the world.’
‘I don’t understand? I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS!’ Jeremy
Jeremy wanted answers. His friend was going to be torn apart and eaten and he more than likely also killed but something within him was screaming for answers.
‘We are The Grandfather Pipes Of Odin. The only place we have in the world now is a place to live, to move with the days and nights forever, and to look into the shadows so we don’t lose vision with the world.’
‘By killing innocent people? This is madness… evil.’ Jeremy
‘Odin abandoned his people but he still touches our destiny with his hands. He brought you down with that storm to feed our bodies and visions.’
‘You’re twisted! Fucking twisted!!’ Jeremy shouted.
‘The only apologizes we give is that you have to be fully mindful for this.’
Jeremy watched as one of the monks came in with a knife and a large fork like object. He tried to escape his bonds but he could barely move as the monk started to cut off his fingers one at a time.
His screams found not one ear friendly for his pain.
Another monk followed along the way during the process sewing up the wounds like a team that has done this many times.
Jeremy passed out from the pain and when he woke another monk was in the room now sitting in the floor in front of him cleaning everything off his finger bones. The monk kept the individual finger bones together by some sort of glue like compound. Then he cut slits in his own arms and inserted the bones where just the fingertip portion of bone was sticking out.
The monk looked at Jeremy and smiled and something about that sent Jeremy’s head spinning again and he passed out.
They would make sure he didn’t die anyone time soon. They have quenched their hunger but will need him to continue peeking into existence.
The bones in his arms monk left the candle room and walked to the temples alter room where by the time he got there the other monks had gathered and he was starting to taste moon dust, though he couldn’t possibly know what that taste was.
He put himself in front of all of them and started to speak words of seeing. Also known as speaking in tongues or puking prophecy as The Punk Monks of the future call it.
At first his words were coming in such a mixture of languages that no one could understand what he was saying but after a bit of time the disclarity cleared and he could be understood, ‘The potentials to the powers and duties of Solomon and Baldur, of The Oracles and The Friday Army, the ones who could be the next Pledge are being watched and hunted. There still is time because The Horsemen haven’t even reached New Olympus yet but a new Sorcerer Of The Touched Calmed Sands must come to choose and if that should happen our prayers will be that she be strong enough for what she is to face.’
BREAKING NEWS: A hacker calling h
imself The Slam Damn hacks into Kill/Spider Industries rocket systems and used a destruct to blow it up citing it was going to deploy a secret satellite for monitoring Beyond Humans.
BREAKING NEWS: Brevard County parents angry some children are being refused access to school buses on rumors that they are the children of healthcare workers and thus might have been exposed to the Ebola virus at some point.
BREAKING NEWS: Israel closes mosque based on it granting sanctuary to a Beyond Human child on the run from the government.
Notes From The Author
What I learned While Writing This: Putting an ? at the end of the title of series can really piss off some people for some reason. I write and exist writing on a corner, in a dingy part of the writing world and this sort of thing makes me smile.
Thanks for reading,
Brian C. Williams
https://twitter.com/hangofwednesday
https://underthetrainingbook.blogspot.com/
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