#alphapoetry

[nathensurman]

On Point

[nathensurman]

ALPHAPOETRY

So maybe i should run the ole' Alphapoetry #STLC again.....

February perhaps?

[mikeyj529]

Hellfire Blues

Sometimes a certain case comes along that shakes you to your core, reaffirms your belief that everything happens for a reason.

The problem with finding and rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a senator is that it was my only successful case. Each of the four that followed all ended in blood. Guilt like that will drive most any man into a bottle forever.

Which is how I wound up at a dive in El Paso called Hellfire Blues, as the bouncer put it: A place where the music plays, the liquor flows and the women come, all for cheap.

Billy Deacon was my latest assignment, a blues guitarist from Baton Rouge who vanished following his gig at a local honky tonk. The trail I followed was soaked in rock n roll and bourbon and ran across the southern US.

"You carry a heavy guilt," said a man who introduced himself as Blue Zebbe, the proprietor of Hellfire Blues. "Drinks are on the house tonight."

"But--"

The air came alive with a lively blues riff and my eyes found a lone man on stage with a beautiful Gibson Les Paul that glowed a sickly shade of red. I had found my man.

"Is that Billy Deacon?" I asked before I drained my glass.

An errant note marred the song, but the guitarist quickly recovered and began his lyrics. "Left my lover back in New Orleans / got behind the wheel / ain't seen nothin' but road ever since--"

"The one and only," replied Blue cautiously. "But he don't give out autographs.

"I've been paid to find and bring him home."

Blue winced with shock. "I didn't even know the boy was missing. Well, if he has people who want him back, I suppose we can arrange something. But right now he's got to finish his set."

I kept the drinks coming and watched Deacon rip song after song on his guitar. All ten fingers nimbly worked the instrument, which seemed to watch you behind its odd color. Hour after hour, I was mesmerized by his music.

When the set ended, Blue introduced me to Deacon and brought us to a cellar room to discuss why I was there. He left to get a fresh bottle of bourbon, but Deacon laughed as soon as the door closed.

"He's not coming back, you know."

I shook my head. "I told him that your family paid for me to bring you back."

Deacon removed his jacket and eased into a chair, casting a sidelong glance at me while lighting a cigarette. Everything about the man oozed resignation, which contradicted everything I saw of him on stage.

"Once we're brought here to this room," he said, shifting his gaze away from me, "we can't leave--at least not of our own will."

"That's plain crazy talk," I replied, rising to my feet to test the door. It was locked. Deacon laughed again.

"Told you."

"This--this is abduction. He can't do this."

"The devil can do anything he wants."

Now I laughed. "You're saying the devil has taken us prisoner?"

"No." Deacon looked me dead in the eyes. "We came of our own free will. Me? How do you think I play so good? I sold my soul to make that kind of music."

I remembered watching his set, the way his fingers moved and the sounds he made from those six strings. Guaranteed no blues rock like Deacon's existed. Did he really make a deal with the devil?

"What brought you here?" Deacon asked with a smirk. "You make a deal?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

But perhaps I had. After all, the guilt I carried after four failed cases worked hard on me. Though I didn't pull the trigger, I was indirectly responsible for their deaths. Did I make a deal for Deacon's safe return?

"Well, maybe it's because you're interfering with my deal." Deacon's expression didn't change.

We waited for what seemed like an eternity in the quiet of that cramped room, waiting for Blue Zebbe to return, and both of us knowing he wouldn't. We had to find a way out. If the door wasn't an option, there had to be--

"Deacon, help me. Maybe we can get out through this window."

He shrugged threw down his cigarette. Maybe he'd already tried it, but I needed to see for myself whether or not it wouldn't work. I was lifted up and given one chance to unlatch the pane. It worked. The window gave.

The sound of footsteps seeped in from underneath the door. I quickly wriggled through the opening and took Deacon's guitar, which he offered up next. Blue Zebbe stepped into the room and cried out with surprise and rage.

"Go get the car!" ordered Deacon. "I'll meet you out front!"

Before I turned away, I saw him knock past Blue and out the door. Once my hand found the guitar case I sprinted pell-mell for the truck. It took only a moment to start up and pull around to the front, but I was in for a surprise.

Hellfire Blues, or what was left of it, stood as a condemned building of twenty or thirty years, covered in boards and a thick layer of dust. I broke inside, but there was no trace of life, let alone of Deacon or of Blue Zebbe.

I returned to Baton Rouge and delivered the news, or a digestible version of it to Deacon's family. They wouldn't accept his guitar, believing it was possessed by an evil spirit. In lieu of cash payment, I took the instrument.

One night on a lonesome road, I took out the Gibson and weighed it in my hands. The red sheen looked into my eyes as it had at Hellfire Blues, and I couldn't resist raking my fingers across the strings.

Its music instantly came alive. Me and the guitar, we worked a magic I never thought possible of my fingers. Ever since, the blues has owned my soul and I've never stopped playing.

[mikeyj529]

The Gorgon's Curse

As a child, I read a book titled The Gorgon’s Curse, a strange young-adult novel about a lonely and beautiful creature who was cursed because every adventurer who loved her ultimately turned to stone. I don’t know why it stuck with me, the story was sappy and totally unbelievable—but what I wouldn’t have given to be pretty and able to turn the men who never gave me a second look into stone into stone. Perhaps the idea of an attractive creature unable to satisfy her love said something about the nature and curse of existence.

Long after I’d put such stories to rest and moved onto other, more important books with substance and meaning, my secure notions of reality came crashing down with the object that fell from the sky. We thought it was a meteor bringing our destruction, but we dead wrong. It was a creature, an alien, a monster, made entirely out of rock with an otherworldly lustre and of such massive proportion that people wished they really had been killed by the impact. Gorgon, they called it, skittering (if that’s the right word for something so big) on three legs with an angular body meeting at a sharp point—the top of its head. It had no discernible eyes, moving with grace and such awareness that it miraculously missed all of the clusters of buildings and trees. Until, that is, it tripped and fell on the civic center.

Who knows how many people were in the building. The scene reminded me of playing toys with my younger brother, who loved to create dramatic scenarios of mass destruction. Except Gorgon wasn’t a toy and it wasn’t make believe. The fight was on. The military came from every direction, fired everything it had, while the rest of us scrambled for a hiding place. Gary, who was with me, steeled his nerves and hoped they’d kick that alien’s ass. Others hoped so, too, the ones who weren’t in shock. Perhaps I was also in shock, but I was more intrigued than angry. Gorgon showed no signs of aggression, even while under attack. I got closer to the fight.

No one realized that from it’s mouth came a series of noises sounding more like an attempt at communication than the grunts they seemed. The style and cadence of those noises changed, and I recognized immediately one string of noise as Russian. When I tried to tell any of the closest military personnel, I was told to evacuate the area. It said something in Arabic I immediately picked up on—on it’s way! Let me help—! A high-impact projectile smashed into the region of its head and sent Gorgon tumbling to the ground. The resulting shockwave scattered us about a dozen yards backward, and when I came to, I noticed a battered copy of The Gorgon’s Curse lying next to me.

Unmindful of the military, I ran up to Gorgon just in time for a final groan and its death rattle. My hands ran along the creature’s uneven surface and I felt its unearthly warmth fade away before it crumbled to dust and floated into the smoke clogged air. My eyes followed the trail, thinking about the significance of discovering that book I’d lost so long ago, coinciding with the arrival of alien life, when a long and terrible shadow blotted out the obscured sun. Gorgon tried to warn us—maybe protect us—but it was too late now. Again I thought of that book, about the nature and curse of existence. The monster we thought we killed revealed it had been us all along, and it opened the door for another, more sinister monster to step through.

[mikeyj529]

Finding Monsters Is Easier Than You Think

In the dark of a room somewhere on the edge of Philadelphia, a door opened in on a man typing feverishly on his laptop, who almost didn't notice except for the small gasp escaping from the intruder's mouth.

"Excuth me," said the child.

The man snapped his fingers and laughed suddenly. "Nope. You've used that line before. I read about your wanderings. What brings you through my door?"

"Honcho thaid thomething about a disthturbanth on Tumblr, tho he thent me to check it out."

"You're Jay, right?" the man flipped his laptop lid closed. "I'm Mikey. Most people call me... Mikey."

"Nithe to meet you," said Jay, striking out a hand.

"So I'm the disturbance you found?"

"Maybe." Jay looked around the 480 square-foot apartment. "Lookth normal enough. Thith mutht be the wrong plathe."

"Don't be so sure of that," Mikey rose to his feet and turned on a lone lamp at the far corner of the room. The apartment turned instantly mysterious. "There's been plenty of disturbances on my end."

Jay raised one eyebrow in suspicion. After a quick check underneath all of the raised surfaces, he harrumphed and crossed his arms. The jig was up.

"You theem to know exactly what I'm talking about, huh?"

Mikey arched an eyebrow in reply.

"Monthterth? I'm here to invethtigate monthterth."

Mikey couldn't suppress his laughter. "You don't think there are monsters here?"

"Nope."

"Monsters are easier to find than you think," Mikey said as he capped his whiskey bottle. "In fact, you're standing in front of one now."

"No way," said Jay as he swatted at the air. "You're no monthter, and I know monthterth. I am one, you know."

"Why? Is it because of the sunglasses? The beard?"

Jay crossed the room and plopped onto Mikey's futon, never taking his eyes off of his host. "No, thilly--becauthe you're a human."

"Just because I look human doesn't not make me a monster."

Jay's brow furrowed as he counted the logic on his fingers. "Tho what you're thaying ith that you are a monthter who lookth like a human?"

"That's right." Mikey pulled a plastic bag from the closet and tested it's strength. "When my mom and dad made me, I didn't come out quite right."

"Huh." Jay glanced nervously at the bag.

"And while most humans do the most deplorable acts on other humans, they aren't necessarily monsters. But me? I am a monster, I can assure you."

Jay shifted uncomfortably on the futon. "You thould know I can perform magic."

Mikey smiled. "That's exactly what I was counting on."

"What are you going to do with that bag?"

"It's October," he said, stepping to his door. "I thought we'd go trick-or-treating."

"But it'th only the 9th! Halloween ithn't for another twenty one dayth!"

"That's where your magic comes in." Mikey opened the door and held out a hand. "Don't you know? Every day in October is Halloween, and I have a powerful lust for candy corn."

Jay sighed with relief, glad he didn't have to teach Mikey a lesson after all, and bounded to the door. He was glad Honcho sent him on this mission, and planned on giving a fully detailed report upon his return.

[mikeyj529]

Follicles

Fucking Darren. We knew it all along, but people and their goddamned compassion--hello? Is this thing on? If you are picking up this message, you need to get underground. As far as you can, as fast as you can. I'll walk you through it in the meantime, until those fuckers triangulate my position and snuff me out. It all started with Darren. Fucking Darren! Me and Bill and Otis saw him first. Christ, we thought he had bad skin. Hairy as a gorilla. Couldn't string two words together. Kept saying his name was Darren. Everyone thought he suffered shock, a trauma of some kind. They took him in. Bill said it was a bad idea. Bill noticed the hair first. Thick and black and moving on its own like little fucking tendrils. Oh, God... Yeah... OK. Darren was taken in by Thelma, the town caretaker. She disappeared that first night. Nobody suspected Darren because he looked like death warmed over. Otis and I had our doubts. People got sick. Rapidly. We couldn't tell if they were hallucinating or if there was any truth to these tiny snakes the rest of us couldn't see. Bill said he saw one, looked like one of those thousand-leggers except more snake-like... I dunno, what does a snake with legs look like? A centipede? Whatever. Anyway, Darren got worse, and by that I mean the hair went wild on him. He kept pleading for help, for someone to put him out of his misery. That's when the sick began to look more like Darren. Hair just as thick and tough and moving without a single breeze. Jesus, I know--just let me keep going! So, OK. Yeah. Darren died. Bill was there to watch him puke out buckets of bile and blood. That's when all the hair on his body sucked back into his pores--what? Oh. Follicles. Right. Well, after the blood came the snakes. Or what looked like snakes. Those laid up were already infested with them. These fuckers went after the rest of us. Tricky sons of bitches. All of them. Moved like insects and disappeared into dark corners and cracks in buildings, cracks in sidewalks. You gotta understand--these things move like insects and disappear like shadows! One by one, the sick went the way of Darren, sowing their own seeds of hell amid the blood and the bile they puked up. All this happened in three days. Do you even hear me? Three days--! I know, I know. All right. People, this is it. The aliens have found us. Well, what else could they be? Let me finish! No one is going to save us. Do you hear me? I am your only and final warning. The government is dead. The media is dead. There is only us. You need to push underground. What we know for sure is what I just told you, and that they need sunlight and/or body heat to survive. We're on the move, too. We'll try to broadcast again when we feel it's safe. Good luck. May God have mercy on our souls--

[mikeyj529]

Elliot, Who We Used to Love

Elliot with the golden hair and blue eyes, the lover of baseball and football, his cocksure attitude about damn near everything--all gone. His mechanical stride across the threshold shattered all I'd been prepared to see of my brother. He was no longer the Elliot we used to love.

Kids talked at school. They marveled at the rumors of his ninety-minute clinical death and wondered aloud if he wasn't the modern day Frankenstein's monster. Before the accident he couldn't put 2 and 2 together, but suddenly he became a math whiz. Dad distanced himself, which Elliot didn't seem to mind. Mom became an emotional wreck, which didn't seem to bother him.

But it was the constant buzzing Elliot claimed to hear that stuck with me. Chatter, he called it. Voices speaking to him when no one else was around. Most of the time I asked him to repeat what he said, only to hear that he wasn't talking to me.

Mom brought home a German Shepherd puppy, mostly to keep Elliot occupied. It worked. He really took an active interest in our new pet, which he named Clover. Those two went everywhere together, which upset me because I'd been replaced like a discarded toy.

No one else saw it but me. Elliot studied Clover. What everyone mistook for petting looked awfully like examinations. His eye caught mine once, as his hands ran over the plush fur, and the terrifying look he flashed me was over before it hit me. I tried telling mom and dad about his odd behavior, but they said I was jealous. How else should a person come back from the dead behave? they asked me.

Not that way, I answered to myself.

Then Clover was gone. Elliot reported the news like he'd lost a pen or misplaced a shoe. She got away, he said casually, and I couldn't catch up. And so we waited. We tacked flyers to telephone poles and street lights. That's when I knew he didn't care whether or not we ever found Clover. He was a terrible liar before the accident and even worse after.

He was never the same once Clover disappeared. He went for walks by himself, never said where he went or for how long he'd be gone. Elliot was so clever anymore. He always did that sort of thing, so why should his walks be any different? That's why I started following him.

A spot along a lonely dirt road was his favorite haunt, so to speak, and once I saw him pluck something from the grassy overgrowth. I couldn't see with his back turned to me, but after he left I inspected the area, expecting to find the mangled corpse of Clover or at least a mound of freshly packed dirt. Nothing.

When I got home, he paced the backyard, talking to himself like usual, so I sneaked into his room while there was time. On his dresser sat Clover's barely-used collar, which she wore the day she disappeared. Next to it, however, was a blood-stained gold ring. 2 and 2 fit nicely together. At that moment, I heard Elliot's steady footfalls approach the bedroom door.

I turned around just in time to see him covered from head to toe in blood and a dripping knife in his hand. As he, the Elliot we used to love, crossed the threshold, I heard the faint sound of chatter filling the room with him.

[mikeyj529]

Dirge Of a Sad Clown

Music came to Richard before the tent, a sad and strange melody curling through the crisp night air like a languid finger.

A lone circus tent oddly sloped at the angles and shifty in the corners all bent out of true, standing alone in a clearing, adorned with tinkling lights in need of changing.

At the door sat a man in a shabby suit, sipping from a flask and weeping to himself. His face sagged with too many years of paint--and its removal--in an eternal and comic frown.

Upon seeing Richard, he broke in to a fresh round of sobs. Go back, he pleaded. Only the wicked dare enter. No one leaves alive.

But Richard entered amid the sad clown's dissuasion and was assaulted by the same sad, tinkling dirge bursting as if from an unseen loudspeaker.

Once adjusted, he stopped at the mouth of a deep chasm which spiraled downward. From behind, the sad clown wept and drank from his flask.

What began as standard carnivalesque fare, with lion tamers, juggling bears and trapeze acts, quickly distorted into impossible images reaching out from Richard's past and brushed their fingertips on his face.

His father, fat and disgusting, whose eyes blazed red from the shadows, taunted him. Ready for some more loving from your old man?

On all fours, Richard's mother crawled out and accused him of every crime he failed to stop. Why didn't you save me, Richie? Don't you love your mother?

Sweat trickled down Richard's face. He wanted to turn back but his mother and father blocked the way. Two levels above, the sad clown looked down. He sipped his flask and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his suit jacket.

One by one, his past came to life with every step.

The teacher who called attention to the stain on his crotch. The boys who called him a faggot at recess. The cop who molested him during his first arrest.

And so it went, on and on, without relief or end.

And the music played on, its volume never decreasing no matter how far Richard descended.

A sea of animals and insects crowded at his feet, all of which he either maimed or killed throughout his childhood. Their mewlings demanded answers.

He ran past them all with a terrible scream, further and further into his descent. How far down did this chasm go?

Past the boy in tattered rags he failed to save from the burning house he robbed. Past the woman he drunkenly took in a dark alley. Past the clerk he shot in a convenience store while tooled up on meth.

And so it went, on and on, without relief or end.

And the music played on, and Richard screamed louder and louder to drown it out, and he ran deeper and deeper.

And all the way at the top, the sad clown still looked on, still drinking from his flask, still wiping his nose.

Eventually Richard reached the bottom, a dank, cavernous place washed in the glow of a red light from nowhere and everywhere. He approached a door and, without hesitation, pushed through.

Somewhere in the darkness of a warm bed, Richard awoke as the dirge faded. He felt the warmth of his wife next to him and laughed triumphantly.

He wasn't any of those things reflected back at him, but damned if that dream hadn't made him feel like a monster. His breathing slowed. In time, he began to drift.

Then the rising sound of that sad, tinkling music filled his ears.

Richard awoke with a start and found the sad clown at the foot of his bed.

Only the wicked dare enter, Richard, said the shabby man, whose blazing red eyes peered at him in the darkness. No leaves alive.