"Yes Jamil, you are correct. We are not infallible as the Elders found out to their dismay. But I hope we will be better guardians of what has been given us by the Gods. And if these Earthers are curious about what we are about, then so be it.”
Jamil gave Evers a cynical look and harrumphed at his explanation. “You talk a fool’s message. The Elders plan, if such as this can be called a plan, is as ridiculous as any I have ever heard. We are here because we were lucky and that is all that it is.”
Evers returned Jamil’s look with one of his own. “I believe it is not just coincidence or luck as you say that we were directed here. I know we are here for a significant reason. The Elders spent thousands of years forming this course of action. It is not a fool’s errand. This is, as it should be."
With these ominous words, Evers turned and walked into the light and disappeared.
To Be Continued
Fun House
The Face In the Mirror
I wondered aloud why they called it a fun house
Jumping at every shadow like a scared little mouse
Warped mirrors threw back my sad distorted face
There was nothing fun about this damn place
Around that corner was a woman from my job
Used her as a scapegoat, tossed her to the mob
Another twist and turn, and I saw the lies I told
That made my little sister sell her immortal soul
My mother’s last words came back to haunt
Please she said, please help your aged aunt
Dark shadows loomed large as I closed my ears
I looked around to see if others saw my dry tears
In the fun house mirror stood my big brother
He loved these drugs more than his own mother
I hung my head at the things he did for crack
I wanted to run, but Instead I turned my back
All around me I heard laughter, loud and gay
Others had no trouble finding their lost way
But every way I turned I ran into a dead end
A light ahead, finally freedom around the bend
I stepped up to the mirror for one last look
I saw my life unfold as if read from a dirty book
Deceitful deeds where I schemed and planned
Never giving a damn about my fellow man
I had sold my soul for fifteen minutes of fame
Ghosts from my past showed me my shame
A shrill laugh floated by me on dirty white wings
You’re still one of us, a harsh voice loudly sings
Never in my life had I thought this would be my end
Standing here confronted by my own guilty sins
But like the hypocrite I am, I only tugged at my blouse
And still I wondered, why did they call it a fun house
Running Out of Time
Time Waits For No One
TIME STOOD STILL, AS Gabby bolted straight up from her bed. She had a terrible headache that the morning sunlight streaming through her window only emphasized.
The nightmare was the same as the previous ones she had for five straight days. This time it seemed more pressing, more realistic than ever before. With an urgency she sensed rather than knew, she jumped up from her bed.
Gabby looked to her cell phone holstered in its stand. The phone’s display read, Thursday September 23, 2035 7:45am. Morning already, she thought and to her dismay, not Saturday. She needed to get up and prepare for work as she did every day except Saturday and Sunday.
But today’s usual routine seemed wrong somehow. The vision seemed more of an omen than a dream. What was she to do? She had no super powers to stop what she had seen. She only had her grandfather’s old watch that had been gifted to her. Her grandfather had passed on to his reward several years ago.
Her mother’s father had been a gentle and kind being. He charmed her whenever they visited him with his tales of dark magic and special abilities. He had a gift, her mother often said, that drew people to him in droves. He had given her the watch and told her to wait. “One day,” he had said, “you will need it and you will know what to do with it.” How she wished he was here now so she could tell him of her dream.
The dream started as usual with her rushing out of her car, barely putting it in park. What a horrific accident. There were smashed up pieces of car everywhere. A young woman was on the ground and blood covered a good bit of her face and chest. The front of the car was totally demolished. Thankfully, a toddler was still strapped into a car seat in the back seat of the car. Gabby could hear the baby's loud crying from where she stood.
"Breathe, breathe, please oh GOD, just let her breathe."
"Mam, you have to get back or we won't be able to get the equipment adjusted the way we need." The older woman paramedic was literally pushing Gabby out of the way as more help came on the scene.
And what a scene it was. Flashing lights of red, orange and blue were swirling out of control. The lights formed a crazy kaleidoscope of colors that burned a blinding path straight into Gabby's overworked brain. She could still see in her mind, the vehicle that caused this horror racing down the street.
The paramedic screamed at her to get out of the way. The police officer came and took control of the accident scene by physically removing her from the paramedic's right side. "Mam, were you in the car, if not you got to get out of the way. Do you hear me, get out of the way before I arrest you!"
GABBY HAD FINALLY FINISHED work and was heading home. She was apprehensive and uneasy. Today felt like the day her dream would unfold.
She decided to make a detour and head to the grocery store instead. As she cautiously made her way to the store, she saw the awful scene unfold just one car in front of her.
So surreal, just like a bad amateurish B movie. The light turned red for westbound traffic, while the heavy duty black pickup truck accelerated to beat the light. The southbound traffic pulling forward with the lead car, a small silver sedan just picking up speed to go through the intersection.
But Gabby knew they were running out of time. She knew she had to act. Only she had the gift that could possibly save this woman's life. She had one chance to get it right, this time.
Driving that small silver sedan, a mom, with a toddler strapped into her car-seat in the rear. Probably just going to the same store Gabby was going to; to get a meal for her family tonight or diapers for the baby.
In that huge monstrous pickup was an older gentleman with a strange intense look on his face. In the blink of an eye, Gabby saw the whole thing unfold.
Gabby looked at her watch. The watch her grandfather had given her. The watch he said was very special and one day she would know what to do with it.
She knew she had only one chance and one chance only to make a difference before it was too late. As she prayed to her GOD to let this mother and child live, she pressed the one button on her watch that could make a difference.
Time reversed.
Gabby sat at the intersection with a small silver sedan in front of her. The westbound traffic light was just turning yellow as a monstrous black pickup truck came thundering through. An older gentleman with a scary intense look on his face turned and looked pointedly at Gabby.
Very clearly she saw the man mouth the words, "That was the last one you get; you've run out of time."
The Prize
One Man’s Trash is Another One’s Prize
AUSTIN WAS TRYING TO bury his new toy under the big overgrown bush in the vacant lot. You couldn't tell it now, but once upon a time this bush would have been the prized flowering rose bush of a caring and careful gardener. It still bloomed heavy blood-red roses with wicked thorns to protect it from marauders.
The bush took up a large section of the ragged, misused yard. It was surrounded by other less showy shrubs but just as large. One could stoop behind its protective arms and not be seen.
Austin thought the bush could probably hide tons of buried treasure. T
he lot itself had been abandoned years before and most of the kids in the neighborhood steered clear of it. Someone had meant to build a house there; had indeed started a broken and crumbly foundation, but bad times being as they were, they had let it all go to waste.
Now all that remained was a semi-cleared hole in the ground and a scattering of overgrown underbrush, tall bushes and a big spreading rose bush. Everyone had started to use the dead lot as their own personal garbage dump. An old mattress was discarded in one corner and miscellaneous parts to some old cars were in another. Whatever anyone didn't want but had no good way to get rid of was dumped on the lot.
The rumor was that the man who owned the land had misfortune raining down on his head; before he could complete the foundation someone had shot and killed him while he was working on it.
Austin didn't know this for sure, but rumors usually started from some truth and therefore something had happened to keep the man from completing his task. He dug harder and with every hot breeze that blew across his cheek, he thought he would be found out.
He understood that if any of the other kids in the neighborhood found his toy, it would no longer be his. Austin knew he was lucky to have found it in the first place.
His mother fearful of all the things that could befall a ten-year-old boy in their neighborhood seldom let him roam around it alone. His eight year old brother Tyson was usually under his feet like hot melted asphalt; but this one time, he had managed to slip out of the house without him being aware.
Austin’s mother had made both him and his brother promise to stay close to home while she was at work. They didn't have summer camp and youth programs in their neighborhood. They only had their mother's directives to stay close and not venture too far, to guide them. Austin used his best judgment as to what was too far.
He had been out hunting. That's how he liked to think about his looking for odd bits and pieces that others had discarded or abandoned. He was six blocks from where he lived, and he was pretty sure this was probably the ‘too far’ his mother cautioned him about.
He had been down to the school yard, but since it was summer, the yard was locked up tight. Austin slipped in anyway, through the gate in the back where the buses came through.
Austin looked around hesitantly and fearfully, with thoughts of being caught running through his mind. Although he thought to himself he wasn't doing anything wrong, but just in case, he was wary. Sometimes teachers dropped things in their haste to get to their cars and maybe today he would find something lucky.
Austin thought he heard someone call his name. He looked around for some bigger kids who hung around the school in the summer. They didn't go to this school, but they liked to hang around it. They weren't to be messed with though because they were mean and nasty.
These mean kids loved to torment the smaller ones and make them do things Austin knew his mother would definitely whip him for.
It wasn't quite his name he heard, more like a ringing or humming in the air. He looked in the direction he thought the sound was coming from.
Nothing over there but some old buses, he thought. Maybe one of the bus drivers dropped a radio or something.
Austin looked around to see if there could have been some other kid around trying to play a trick on him. Austin didn't really have any other friends around here. He was very careful and tried to be quiet as he looked around. He knew it could be very dangerous to be caught alone.
One of the guys he knew had told him about a boy who had gotten tricked into going around back of the sanctified church on the corner. The boy had gotten his head beaten in for his curiosity. The boy was still in the hospital and couldn't even speak. His neighborhood was rough and people were always cruel, especially to a small for his age black boy.
Over by the last school bus in the corner was where the humming seemed to be coming from. Austin cautiously made his way over to the bus, looking behind him all the while.
Yes, there was something on the ground, almost under the back tire. It was shining and seemed to almost glow. He squatted behind the bus's tires and picked up the shiny object. It was spherical in shape, but had several small knobs protruding from its hard surface. It was roughly the size of a baseball, but very lightweight.
He ran his finger over the surface and it made his fingers tingle. POWER, that's the word that suddenly came into his mind. This thing has power. He didn't know how he knew; he just did. There were deep grooves all over the thing and tiny little zigzags etched into it that almost looked like letters. If they were letters, they weren't from any book Austin knew how to read.
Austin thought back to all the commercials he had recently seen on TV, to see if this was the latest new thing kids his age just had to have. He couldn't remember any such toy. He thought and thought and tried to remember the last time his mother had let him go to the toy store. That had been last Christmas, when she had let him and Tyson walk up and down the aisles to pick out what they wanted for Christmas.
Austin smiled. He remembered how his mother had said, "Just one toy each, that's all, I don't have much more than that for each one of you. Make sure it doesn't cost more than twenty-five dollars. That's all I got for both of you."
This toy didn't look like the toys in the store either, not even the expensive ones that he and Tyson had to put back on the shelf when his mother saw what they were doing.
YOU CAN HAVE YOUR HEART'S DESIRES. Where had that thought come from? He didn't know how, but it just sort of spoke in his mind. He looked around again to make sure he was alone.
He had finally found something new, something lucky, and he said out loud, "I bet nobody has a toy like this one. I got to hide it before the other kids see it."
Austin shoved his new toy under his shirt and hoped nobody saw him. He took the route through the back of the school to get back closer to home. He cautiously crept through the Middleton's back yard and down between other houses of people he didn't know. Austin was doing everything that his mother told him not to do, but he didn't care. Somehow he knew he wouldn't be caught.
I'LL JUST DIG A LITTLE in the soft dirt under this bush and bury my prize a little bit more, he thought to himself. He accidentally twisted one of the knobs on the thing. It hummed louder and glowed more. POWER, it practically sang in his mind. He didn't know why he now thought of his found toy as a prize, but he figured he was the winner of the best prize of all.
Austin accidentally pricked his hand against the rough woody thorns of the bush. A glistening red drop of blood ran down his hand and landed on his prize. Suddenly the hole he was digging was larger than anything Austin could have dug that quickly.
"Austin, where you at? Ma said you better get back before she whips your tail."
He heard his brother Tyson calling for him, and he almost dropped his prize. Nothing could be worse than Tyson getting his hands on what was his. He stuffed his prize in the hole and it seemed it buried itself. He patted the dirt back in place with a desperation he had never known or had before.
It wasn't just that his mother was looking for him, he might have some explaining to do and Austin somehow knew he couldn't explain his new find. But, Tyson might see what he had and his mother always made him give whatever he had to him. Tyson was the baby and everyone said he looked just like the dad that neither Austin nor Tyson knew.
Their dad and any presence they might have felt were both long dead. There were a few pictures around the house that clearly showed a much younger and happier mother and smiling father. Two small boys, Austin at two and Tyson a mere wrapped bundle completed the happy scene. Theirs was a father roughly torn from his small family way too soon. He had no knowledge of those times.
His aunt Marie, his mother's sister, said Tyson looked so much like his father that he could've spit him out. No one apparently thought Austin looked like anyone; spit out or not. Nothing good was ever said of him. He was the oldest, but not the cutest and there wasn't much praise for anything he did.
"Austin, wha
t you doing over there? Ma just got home, and she sent me to tell you that you better get your behind back foe she has to come looking for you."
Austin sat down on the ground, almost on top of the hole that buried his new prize. He tried to control his breathing so Tyson wouldn't suspect anything. He didn't know where these new thoughts were coming from that compelled him to hide what he was doing.
"Ty, what're you doing over here? There's no reason for you to come looking for me. I told you I would be right back and not to worry. What did you tell Ma anyway?" He said this as he nursed his torn and bleeding hand and rubbed it under his shirt.
"I didn't tell Ma nothing. She asked me where you had got to when she got home and I didn't know, cause you didn't tell me nuthin about you leaving." Tyson hopped from foot to foot trying to get as close to Austin as he could.
"Well, here I am, what do you want?"
"Nuthin, just that you better get back home."
"I'm coming, just taking a little break here under this old bush. It's nice and cool here. Austin got up from the ground and walked over to Tyson as if nothing was wrong. He even put his arm around his shoulder in a brotherly hug. "Come on let's go home. Maybe Ma has something good to eat cooking up."
Tyson looked at Austin as if something was not quite right. Austin did seem to shine a little bit. Or, was it just sweat on his skin that made him appear shiny? Tyson being just eight didn't give it too much thought before he was on to something else. "Why were you digging in the ground under that bush? What you trying to hide?"
Out of the Mind Of . . . A Fantasy and Paranormal Anthology Page 2
