by Dan Henk
I’m with the first girl I ever had sex with, twisting and turning in her bed, uttering infantile gibberish. I’m hoping it comes across as playful banter, but I know deep down it really isn’t working. Anything is better than admitting my lack of experience. She seems to be indulging my childish behavior in anticipatory passion, her eyes half-closed, her groping fingers pulling at my shirt.
I’m slipping a military can opener out of the inside pocket of my Member’s Only jacket. I flip it around in my fingers and try to pop open the plastic display encasing a Def Leopard cassette. An obvious store plant keeps passing, his sidelong glance a transparent attempt at surveillance. I’m too slick for him. This would probably be the fourteenth cassette I’ve stolen. And that’s not counting all the other stuff.
CHAPTER XXIII
BACK WHERE I STARTED
A burst of light, a deep gurgle, and my vision opens up into a watery floor, the sand crusted up around my eyes. I pull loose, hoisting aloft with a tremendous cascade of flying water. A shrill sucking enfolds me, and I glance up just in time to see a saucer-shaped ship disappearing into the clouds. I am in a forest. The trees appear South American.
A flash arcs across the sky, crackling out of the billowing clouds like lightning. Everything grows still. Not even the insects chatter. Suddenly, the sky erupts in a brilliant flash, followed by a thunderous concussion nearby that rocks the ground. Treetops sway fiercely, the leaves moaning in discomfort. I struggle to my feet. A centipede, a full six inches long, is crawling on my forearm. I flick it off, bound out of the sunken stream, and start jogging toward where I think the noise originated.
I leap over a fallen tree trunk, tear through a mass of underbrush, and come within inches of plowing into a screaming, white-faced monkey. The animal’s shriek throws me off, and as I attempt to avoid it my feet slip in mud. With a failing attempt at equilibrium, I crash into the root-choked soil, my forward arm pulverizing the rock in front of me. Scrambling to my feet, I keep running. Through a thick grove of spindly trees, I see a light piercing the distant underbrush. I head toward it, thrashing through the foliage in a mad dash. A tree frog jumps onto my swinging forearm, the sticky toes maintaining a tenuous balance. It refuses to leave, the glossy eyes staring at me as its pallet balloons and shrinks in a methodical rhythm. I shake my arm, trying to dislodge the creature, but it stubbornly stays aboard. I slow to a walk, holding my arm aloft. The animal groans and makes an indignant leap toward a passing branch. Then the croaking of hundreds of frogs reaches my ears, the volume growing louder by the minute. I start running again. The scrubby trees part, the ground in front dropping away into a shallow creek.
Clear water drifts over smooth pebbles, the sidewall a muddy bank bursting with webs of root. I leap into the water, my feet scraping to the bottom with a tremendous splash, a dark creature wriggling away in panic. Sloshing over to the opposite bank, I grab some vines and hoist myself up. Just ahead of me, through the thick underbrush, I can make out a flattened locus, the cleaved tops of neighboring trees skewed at a slanted angle. I hack my way forward, tearing through the entangling mesh. Bugs swarm around me, gnats angrily buzzing about my torso, aphids spilling off the leaves as I pass. Centipedes and beetles scatter before my feet, flocking over the ground with a legion of insects. What is chasing them all out? This is bizarre! The strange thing is they are all moving backwards, fleeing whatever lies ahead.
Pushing through a hanging curtain of fern, a cleared out swath of forest greets me, the trees chopped almost to their roots. Emitting a train of slowly rising smoke, an Al’lak fighter sticks diagonally out of the ground. Something has hit it hard, a huge chunk out of the right side testifying to this, the slashed wing showcasing a dangling bundle that resembles veins. A greenish goo oozes from the tattered cusps. I slow down, warily approaching. The smoke is billowing out of some rupture on its left side. The forest is absolutely silent. Nothing moves, nothing breathes. The only sound comes from the soft drift of smoke. I don’t even know how I can sense this, but something stinks. It’s a pungent, acid-tinted odor that for all the world smells like a squished palmetto bug.
I have no idea what this means. Is this a natural accident? Has someone else entered the picture? Is it the same race that the Al’lak were struggling with? For a moment I debate looking in the crashed vessel. But that might open up a whole can of worms. Whatever is going on here, I want no part. Turning my back, I take off running, slower at first, then breaking into a mad dash as I plunge into the forest depths.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1972, on a small army base in the south, Dan Henk grew up on a diet of science fiction and horror books. Playing soldier and building tree forts on the abandoned training grounds of the bases his dad was stationed at, everything was good until he got into metal and punk rock in his teens. That didn't settle well with his super religious father, and at eighteen Dan Henk was kicked out of his house. He spent the next eight months homeless, often living in the woods. Six months later, he was in the passenger seat of a car that flipped and his face broke the windshield. Soon after that, the tendon on his thumb was severed in a fight with a crackhead.
Despite the obvious obstacles, the next six years were fairly productive, involving gallery showings, illustration work for Madcap Magazine, Maximum Rock and Roll Magazine, and a slew of bands and clubs. He was doing artwork on the side and finally attended art school, moving to NYC to make it a full time career.
Dan went on to be in more galleries, do more band artwork, and paintings for Aphrodesia and several Memento books. Magazines started to feature his tattoo work. But things continued to be difficult. Dan came down with brain cancer, and his wife died in a hit-and-run accident. He moved across the country, finished his first book, The Black Seas of Infinity, and had it published in 2011 by Anarchy Books. He started illustrations for Black Static Magazine, This Is Horror, and Splatterpunk, book covers for Deadite Press, a splash page for an issue of The Living Corpse, and still more work for Memento. He also began a regular comic strip for Tattoo Artist Magazine, and a series of blogs for them as well.
Damnation Books picked up his second novel, Permuted Press picked up his debut book for a re-issue, and he's writing a regular column now for Skin Art Magazine. If he’s not dead and all of this isn’t an illusion, things might be picking up.
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind”—HP Lovecraft
