DAY 21: Full Circle

Girls, just want to have fun.

Carey froze in the act of turning the knob. Where in the world had he heard those words before? And why should it send shivers through his spine as if his body had just been plugged into a wall socket? He tried to shake the sensation that seemed to be holding him in temporary paralysis. Does the name Cyndi Lauper ring your bell? His thought seemed to ask him. Of course, the female pop singer had a hit which went by the title. Carey reckoned that wasn’t grounds to set a man’s nerves on edge.

Girls, just want to have fun, the parakeet repeated. Something is not right about that song, Carey thought and slipped out the door heading for work.

By the time he returned in the evening, Carey had forgotten all about the words of his parrot. But, as he stepped across the threshold the scent of Rebelle hit him like the return of a painful memory or like the fragrance coming off a rotting corpse. Carey never used the perfume, couldn't. It was for women. Somebody broke into my house while I was away. His lips tightened into a thin line.

Carey searched the entire structure for an intruder and found nobody. He checked to see if something had been stolen or broken. Nothing. What the hell was he looking for? He asked himself. Carey’s house was a little out of the way and stood on an expansive stretch of lawn.

Girls, just want to have fun. The parakeet’s words threw a jump into him. What in the world was wrong with girls having fun? He knew he had nothing against that. And yet something didn’t feel right. Caution kept tugging at the heartstrings of his survival instincts. It was almost like a fire siren going off on his insides. Red Alert! Red Alert! Red Alert! That perfume . . . Rebelle. Where had he come across it? Was it even important if he recalled the personality who used it back then? Was it a former girlfriend of his?

Carey got rid of the day’s clothes and after a hot shower, he sat in front of his TV to watch the soaps. A  Breaking News was running. Two convicts had escaped from the federal maximum security facility. One had been caught, the other, a woman was still at large. She was last seen heading west in a black Honda Element-stolen, of course. Her name is . . .

He had heard enough. And the feeling had finally come home, full circle.

“Carrie,” he said, and shivered like he had the shakes.

The scent of Rebelle at that moment was cloying. Then, as if in reply to his calls, Carey heard footfalls muffled by the rug covering coming down the stairs. He didn’t have to wonder who the feet belonged to. At one time, they had been partners who hacked high-security main frames and stole chips containing confidential info only to resell them to high tech companies at huge prices.

The last time she was here they had been in the sitting room on the same sofa Carey now occupied. The DVD was playing an old school by the pop artist, Cyndi Lauper. The parakeet had been hers and she was always saying those words that had been bugging Carey for some time now to it. The parakeet had not spoken those words for the past ten years since his former partner had been jailed. Carey had betrayed her to the cops when his cover was almost blown. And now she had escaped. And she was back.

            “Payback’s a bitch,” Carrie said.

Girls, just want to have fun, the parakeet said.

Notes to myself:

Flesh out this story in the rewrite.

Does Carrie need a longer backstory?

Is there need to go into details about the heist that got Carrie jailed and turned Carey into a betrayer?

DAY 20: Scrivener's Pen

All I did was kill my wife with a stroke of my scrivener’s pen.

My world used to be full of sunshine and hope. The skies were always flushed with colors and sweet promises of better days. But right now? I’m sorry I sound like a cliché those times are as lost as sand castles washed off by incoming breakers. Someone once asked me, if you had to choose between yesterday and tomorrow, which you would you pick and why? Back then, I didn’t really know what to choose, I may have picked tomorrow because I had dreams of better days with Iris. But, you know all it takes is a little trauma to get you decided. And then, you’re forced to make some really nasty decisions in a split second.

How did I arrive at this place of misery? As they say, it’s a trifle long story. Actually, it’s close to three or four or five maybe, six more pages of the journal you hold in your hands.

Iris cashed in her chips on Tuesday, August 5th, 2009. She used to be my woman. Lawfully wedded wifey and all that jazz. You dig my gist thus far, do you not? I suppose a little backstory about how I met Iris would be in order, do you think?

It was pouring that beautiful Saturday evening down here in Cornrow. I was caught hands down without my umbrella and so I chose to stand under the awning of a local beauty shop, Deborah’s Drawer or Locker now that I think about it, it might have been Deborah’s Cabinet or probably, Wardrobe. I may not be right on top of it. I’m at sea when it concerns women stuff. You could point me right at a woman and tell me what she got on her head is braids. And the next moment if you asked me I might say waves or brakes or even cakes. I kind of love the one they call Alicia Keyes, though. Nice work naming the hairstyles after my favorite female artist.

She must have been in there for a while, because I never saw her go in. And I wasn’t aware I was blocking the entrance until she rammed the steel handle into my spine trying to get out of the shop. Damn, how fast the heat returned to my body in that cold weather. It hurt like a broken heart.

I grunted and went sprawling on the asphalt of the parking lot. Iris dumped her bags (she had quite a few on her) and rushed to my side. (That was probably one of the few times a lady got rid of her handbag for a guy.)

            “Sorry mister. I didn’t see you standing there. Are you hurt?”

            “I don’t think so. But I’ll never know for sure unless you’d step aside so I can pick myself up and check.”

Iris smiled. It was her killer smile; she had a way of curving her lips around the edges so it lit up her entire face like ten thousand suns were shining through her skin. Our relationship was kindled by the warmth of that smile. Plus, we happened to be running down the same alley as careers went-the business of the imagination. What are the odds against that?

I never believed in fickle things as love at first sight. Had I been one prone to roam such territories maybe, I would have labeled my encounter with Iris by such a triviality. Cause we sort of melded immediately. It was like we’ve been acquainted for a while and just stumbled on each other again or like something invented through subconscious association, like we’ve always been waiting to meet each other. Like the reaction of salt and water. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of a future wife, just yet. I just felt that . . . that . . . what do you call it? . . . bonding. Yeah, it’s true that love is a mystery to everyone, except the poets.

Like I said, I’ve never had room for a love at first sight. I’ve always believed that love is patient. For me, that meant love takes its time and takes time. Love allows for recognition and fellowship. With love, there’s that pervasive sense of companionship that could only be honed as time does its work. And then, love makes itself known.

Notes to myself:

I’ve established something of a fantastical relationship between these two writers. Now, all I need do is work in the tragedy; how did Iris cash in her chips? Die, in other words?

Did the author really stab her to death with his pen or are his words allegorical?

Who (if the writer didn’t do it) killed his wife?

DAY 19: Remnants of Atlantis

The Nok Culture of Central Nigeria is an enigmatic and unstudied entity. It represents the earliest sculptural art of sub-Saharan African as well as the beginning of iron metallurgy.

Nothing else is known.

Encyclopedia.com

Coffey Ankh wrote articles on extinct cultures or ancient and lost civilizations for an archeology journal. His job could be more appropriately termed freelancing since he contributed his discoveries to a variety of news agencies and editorials but wasn’t exactly bound by contract to any of them.

He was the self-styled connoisseur in horrors. And that by interpretation meant he had a nose for trouble. He wasn’t the kind of researcher who defined FEAR as Fuck Everything And Run. Mysteries (weird mysteries) were his specialty. That was the factor which filled him with guts and gusto to make the suicide attempt at uncovering the secrets of the sub-Saharan Atlantis-the ancient civilization of Nok in the cave of the creeping shadow.

For Coffey, it was a quest to redefine all quests. To Nok, the birthplace of Sub-Saharan Africa came Coffey Ankh, the nosy explorer amped up by two macho locals serving as guide and guard, respectively. This early into their hunt, he was unaware he would return alone. On their first evening out there, they were attacked by crows. The men with Coffey visualized this as an omen, a negative one, by all means. Coffey and superstition were not well acquainted. He would not turn back for the life of him. “This expedition is taking one minute too long.” And he strode ahead of them into the portal of the ancient cave.

The cave is deep and at a point, they had to indulge in a little onsite excavation. It’s important to note that this group of amateur archeologists were subjected to a rite of passage before being certified to come this far. A monkey was scraped and beheaded by the village prophetess and its blood was sprinkled on these three. Coffey didn’t much care about the blood so long as he was allowed to do what he came to do.

Coffey was privileged to have in his possession a book of Nokian codes prepared by Prof. Strom from fragments of hieroglyphic writings discovered around former locations of Nok civilization. A great resource when dealing with the ancient language of Nok which of course, sounded or read like nothing we know today. Indeed, they came upon a few ancient inscriptions left behind by the lost people of the Nok. Handwritings on the walls, as these finds would later be called. Coffey pulled out the volume from his backpack and tried for a translation.

According to Strom’s Book of Nokian Codes, the inscription said:

Notes to myself:

The inscription probably turns out to be a warning about impending doom for all that seek to find the secrets of the extinct people of Nok.

But are they indeed extinct? What if Coffey finds some of these historic still living behind the walls of that cave?

How did they become extinct? A plague? War? Some alien encounter?

Coffey and his colleagues discover the head of a terracotta monkey which would serve as a note of impending doom.

Does the entire experience leave this man, Coffey a little over-the-top? Like does his experience at the cave make him insane hi I figure it would serve to deepen the plot if the journalist

DAY 18: Atmosphere of Tombs

“I was the last man to be evacuated.”

Dr. Tobias (physician/counselor, The Cornrow Central Hospital) sat across me in a leather chair. The chair was having a hard time trying not to spill him to the floor. He was a flabby man. And he was all ears.

Lately, I’d been having nightmares and I got to scream and scare the hell out of everyone in the hospital when I really got going. But I couldn’t help it. I was guilt-tripped; I had gone against the very laws of human empathy.

            “There was once a chance I didn’t take,” I said, as I propped myself up on the chaise lounge in the doctor’s office. “And this might be the only shot I got at taking the weight of my guilt, the bulk of it anyway, off my chest. One thing I would really appreciate if you understood is this: I wasn’t conferred with any authority; it wasn’t really my responsibility to make decisions. I just felt this compulsion and a kind of hunch that I couldn’t quite shake.

            “I used to be one of four ramp attendants employed by a private-run airfield that maintained a beat up landing strip for narrowbody aircrafts. The Rumpus Airfield was a wild conceit as airfields went. It probably boasted most of the facilities you’d find in a standard airport. A Control Tower, parking bay, hangar, one-story structure where cargo/shipment was repackaged which we called our Terminal building. That building was a real show off-I mean we had all the security gadgets of a real airport in there, screening machines and the works. We even maintained a cold room.

“There was a staff of four ramp attendants who ran operations at the airfield, operating equipments, cleaning cabins (if called for) and assisting the pilots. We specialized mainly in cargo aircrafts. Trouble came a-calling in a package or shipment as we called them around our circle. In a shipment labeled Dangerous Goods bearing urgent instructions:

                        Deliver immediately.

“And below that:

                        This shipment left our dock in perfect condition.

                        Upon arrival please check for damage and conflicts between specified and feasible quantity before signing.

“My colleagues and I, we checked the content of the cargo. This was normal procedure, nothing special. But again, the stuff inside the box made our scanners go bonkers and so we had to prove the content wasn’t nuclear or something like that, you know.

“The box belonged to Dugan Laboratories. We reported our findings okay and I thought the management ought to have taken care of it. My responsibility ends here kind of attitude. But somehow, I knew I could have done something.

“It was two weeks later, while skimming the pages of a daily that I saw tucked away at a corner the story titled, Scientist Dies After Sniffing Poison Gas. The incident occurred at the Dugan Laboratories. Only I knew it wasn’t poison gas. I had seen and held the tubes that contained the virus.

“The day the plague broke out, I was on duty. I saw it on TV when one of our guys who had gone in to get soda came out running and exclaiming, ‘You guys really need to see this.’ Well, we went in with him and we saw.”

Notes to myself:

The carnage this guy (who I’d call Reynolds) witnessed should be detailed in the rewrite.

This is to be a two-sided conversation with the counselor contributing to the narrative with questions and assertions.

This is a story of a scientific experiment gone wrong. It had nothing to do with humans initially (ha ha). But it’s meant to be a satire of how mad men and specialists  turn children to killing machines in time of war.

DAY 17: Coming of the Psychopomp

The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.

One summer evening, while the horizon held on to the final arc of an orange sun, Kamen made a visit to the local cemetery. He didn’t go to this place of memories to pay his respects to a loved one nor did he bring flowers to the grave of some distant relation or even a colleague. Kamen was visiting the grave of his role model/mentor.

Rey Brandon passed away less than two weeks ago and Kamen had come to invoke his spirit. Well, not really in the archaic sense of the word although, the folks in the Roman legend era would have seen that way. What he actually pray to his role model much like a wife would pray to the spirit of her departed hubby or vice versa.

In his prayer, Kamen asked that the soul, the wit, the genius and the muse of the dead writer be ceded to him. He prayed that the spirit of the writer become his personal muse and asked to be guided by whatever force decided his mentor’s daily routine especially, his writing routine.

Perhaps, what this writer needed was a little education to set him straight. Like someone ought to have been there to fill him in on the raw facts of life; there was actually a spirit, for better or worse, that lived in the dead writer. Something that was still seeking a host to possess. You didn’t just get all prolific overnight and churn out 25 bestsellers in fifteen years!

For Kamen, nothing special happened at the graveyard. No angelic voices sang Handel’s Hallelujah, the devil was probably caught up some place trying to make some kid torch his pet’s tail to come promise him the world if only he would bow down and worship, there was nothing out of the way here, folks. Just the breeze sighing through the trees. But as he got up to leave, Kamen felt moisture at the center of his head and lifted his head to the tree right above him. A raven stood on one of its shoulders. He touched his hand to the wet spot on his head and checked.

            “Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t pray for no shit anointing, thank you.” He scoffed as he dusted the soft grassy soil off his knees. He went home not knowing if his prayer had been treated with contempt or if a favorable answer was in the details. In the days which followed however, things took a turn for this ambitious writer.

More on that later.

Kamen was single when we met him. He lived in a large apartment but rarely stayed in there. He built for himself a brick study somewhere in his expansive garden. This is where all his mysterious writings took place.

Somewhere along the line Kamen had an accident. He toppled off the staircase one morning while coming down for breakfast and suffered a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). It’s nothing serious, really only for him life would never be the same again. The line between the real world and the world of his imagination blurs. And something had used his dysfunctional state (he was unconscious for several hours) as a channel to possess his body. Now there are two people inside him. Kamen came to believe this was his muse and really it was. But it was much more the coming of the spirit of his mentor-the answer to his prayer. And that wasn’t such a bad thing, was it?

Meanwhile, Kamen’s stories became better; he churns out stories with amazing regularity and beats all expectations. Even his agent notes and actually commends him on his unbelievable transformation. And Kamen replied jokingly, “Sometimes, a fall could be the greatest thing that can happen to a writer.” But we know for sure that is, do we not?

And Kamen had this maid, who came in to do chores (as if maids could serve any other purpose) who’s got something paranormal about her. It was the lady who first observed that Kamen’s talent is not natural and she was also there when things got out hand to help Kamen out. This writer actually survived the possession, thank God. That would be a first for me, in any of my writer stories, I think.

Notes to myself:

Okay, it’s a story of the paranormal. Kamen’s writing periods are marked by outrageous display of the supernatural. Once, while he was in his study up there in his garden, Gerda, that’s his maid, witnessed clouds assembling over the roof and twirl in an upward winding gyre. It was one of the episodes that convinced her there was more to Kamen’s writing ingenuity.

There will be only one raven in this story and its going to be the conduit of the supernatural.

DAY 16: The Green Coverall

I once possessed a green corduroy coverall. It was a gift from an uncle. I liked wearing that thing a lot. I wanted the piece of fabric on my body immediately after my bath everyday, all week.

Thing was Luckey, the family dog didn’t give a fishbone what I wanted. The dog had a problem with the green coverall. I couldn’t quite decide what pissed it off-was it the green color or just cause it was a one-piece clothing? But I could figure it would often work itself into a frenzy whenever I wore the outfit.

I tried avoiding Luckey but get serious though, how do you avoid a bitch living in the same house with you? I recollect the day it actually bit me and left me with a scar. Right there on my left thigh. Through the years, I’ve gotten over the shock of that moment but the scar serves as a signature, a pointer to that once upon a time.

The dog bite was the final word on the issue of the green coverall. I turned it over to the care of the closet. Many waters passed under the bridge and my fascination with the green dress waned. One day, as I was rummaging through my stuff for no reason I can readily recall, I heard a soft, quiet voice.

            “Hello, Staub.” The voice had a rusty edge. Not a resonance you would want to relate to friendly. I was surprised and puzzled and verging the lip of afraid. “Hello, Stauauauaubbb.”

            “Who’s there?” Now I was beginning to get chicken scared.

            “A friend,” It said.

            “What do you want?”

            “I want to talk. I want to be your friend,” The strange voice said. “Will you be my friend?”

I couldn’t block out the voice but I didn’t have to buy what it was selling, did I?

            “I don’t know. What do you look like? Show me your face.” I must have felt a little like Moses talking to that bit of burning bush. “Come out and stop hiding.”

            “I am not hiding,” It said. “I’m right here. Right in front of you.”

Somewhere in the darkness of that closet, I saw something giving off a green glow in short busts. It was the green coverall. But was that voice coming from beneath, behind or within it? That I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

            “Now you see me,” It said. I sensed something like triumph in its voice.

            “Clothes don’t talk,” I said, stupefied. Who wouldn’t have been? I was only eight.

            “But they do, my boy. Sure, they do.” It moved more like wriggled on the closet floor towards me. “Come, let me take you beyond human misconceptions into something sweet and eternal.”

I was afraid. Scared shitless by all I’d seen thus far. The only thing I wanted to do was get out of that closet. Get away from it as far as possible. Get away and never go back in there. And that’s exactly what I did. I crawled out of that place with the middle fingers of both hands plugging my ears.

Outside the closet and outside my bedroom, I could still hear the voice of the green coverall. It was in my head and it wasn’t screaming or threatening me. It was coaxing me, calling me to come back and join its fellowship. There were others across the globe, waiting for my initiation. “You can’t run away forever!” That one was a few decibels into the realm of a scream. But I knew it to be true. Someday, I was going back into that closet, like the day after, and get a change of clothes. And then, the green dress would get me.

I thought about telling my parents about it but banished the thought as fast as it had occurred. Adults had their mental repertoire rearranged. It happens to the best of us. Once you hit puberty every shit beyond this realm is (roll of drums please) superstition.

Luckey, the family dog and I got along, just fine so long as I wasn’t donning that accursed green fabric. Then, one day, and this time everybody was home, I forgot about the beef between Luckey and the green thing. I went into the closet (Now that I think about it, I believe I was drawn to put on the cloth.) and fetched the dress then, wore it. I was so glad to have found it and it’s a wonder I couldn’t recall why I’d tuck it so deep into the closet.

The dog bit me without a moment’s hesitation. The coverall had not lost its devilish charms on Luckey. The pet I had just finished playing with bit me like I was a stranger infringing its territory. I didn’t cry because the dog bit me. No, it was the rage in its eyes. It was defined by cold hate, like it could have done away with me if given the chance. I cried because I knew then, what unruly strangers and visitors knew about our family dog. I bet it hurts to be hated even by a dog.

After I returned from the clinic, I got rid of the green thing, flung it deep into the farthest corners of the closet with all the strength I could muster. And I could hear it laughing. Cackling wildly in my head. It glowed briefly and then, it winked out like a candle in a windstorm. It was just like it never happened.

My next encounter with the coverall from hell happened when I was an eighth grader. I was playing a game of cops n’ gangsters with my brothers. Ask any kid and they’ll tell you the best games take place in the closet. I lost myself in all that excitement, I forgot about the colossal creeping cloak in the closet.

            “Hello, Staub.” It was in my mind. Inside my mind and was I scared? Scared as a mouse caught in a trap. That’s how scared I was.

            “Go away. You do not exist,” I said.

            “I’m glad you finally saw reason and decided to join us.”

My mouth was dry. My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth.

            “Come closer, Staub.”

            “I found I couldn’t resist the pull of evil in the piece of clothing. I obeyed and went to it.

            “Put me on.”

And that’s exactly what I did. And when I’d done that evil came and clouded my mind.

            “It’s time to deal with Luckey.”

Notes:

Tell/show the death of the dog and how the kid got rid of the green coverall.

Did he get any help from family?

Or did the green coverall hurt any member of his family?

All this should reflect in the second draft.

DAY 15: The Atlantic Manuscript

The Dual Mandate is a book authored by the first Governor General of then colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard and published in 1922. In it, he details the wealth and potential of the yet-to-be greatest African nation.

A guide to this vulgate was written by one of the royal scribes serving under Lugard and posthumously published. The Atlantic Manuscript, as the volume has come to be known, contains hard facts. Raw data on Nigeria’s resources which were previously recorded with a calculated quick-glance-over-the-shoulder disposition in the Lugard account in the interest of national security.

The tome had since gone out of print. However, a copy of The Atlantic Manuscript (published in limited quantities) was stored under lock and key in the library of the Lord Lugard College. It was the last known surviving copy in existence. In the early hours of the morning, a security guard on patrol at the college had discovered the safe where the book was kept open and the volume gone. Someone had entered into the campus undetected and made away with one of the most sensitive publications in the history of the nation. No security gadget had been hacked by the thief.

Police sources claimed it was an insider job. All security personnel on duty had been detained for further questioning. But, Chris Caldo, a young reporter working for The National Gazette, an online news resource, believed there’s more to the whole drama than met the eye. This is the story of a young web journalist trapped in a game of intrigue, suspense and uncanny manslaughter.

                        ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍

The early morning April sunlight was just poking the skies with flaming tentacles when a young man, sporting a burgundy plaid flannel shirt atop baggy jeans shorts, bounded up the steps of Kangan Police Department. The young man, Chris Caldo was a web reporter. He was on his way to interview the security personnel of Lord Lugard College where an important historical and highly sensitive document had been reportedly stolen. Caldo had a nose for trouble and he’ll stop at nothing to uncover the bizarre plot at work in the situation.

Something told him the security personnel were innocent and he was out to prove it. Caldo saw some police officers standing at the entrance of the police station and the sirens of his heart went bonkers.

            “How the hell did they get past the guys on duty?” said one of the cops. The name tag on his breast said his name was John.

            “Nobody heard anything until the wee hours of this morning.”

Caldo walked up to one of the officers, they knew him cause he’d been here many times. “Heard what, Jones?”

The cop eyed him probably, considering if it was safe to let the cat out the bag to an outsider especially him, a reporter. Then, he shrugged, to hell with it. What’s done’s done.

            “They’re dead, Caldo.”

            “Who’s dead?” But he already knew who.

            “The security guys we brought in for questioning yesterday.”

            “What happened?”

            “Nobody knows how it happened. One of our own was checking up on them this morning when he found they were lying facing the wall. They didn’t seem to be breathing, he said. He went in for a close up inspection and one by one they came up dead. Slit in the guts. Every one of them.”

            “And nobody caught a suspicious figure entering or leaving the station?”

            “Nothing. Look, Caldo, I already told you everything I know about this tragedy. I suggest you beat it before I get my ass fried for running off to a journalist.”

Caldo’s suspicions had just been justified. Any bias that may have fluttered in the investigators’ minds concerning college security involvement was now by all practical purposes, annihilated.

Our young reporter’s next port of call was the prestigious library of the Cornrow Local Council where fragments of The Atlantic Manuscript had been displayed. He was lucky to find they were as yet not tampered with. Caldo discovered little to stimulate his curiosity, but the few copied pages hinted at something he’d been suspecting existed-a secret mineral resources depot. This fragment mentioned CH4 was discovered in abundance at a mining site during the colonial times. CH4 is the main component of natural gas. This fragment didn’t name the location of the site.

That was okay as far as Caldo was concerned he’d seen enough. He’d read once that natural gas is fast taking the pride of place that once belonged to petroleum and the world aware of the rapidly decreasing quantity of petroleum had been searching for an alternative. Methane could be that alternative. Useful for electricity generation (something Nigerians can reckon with), and given time, transportation, as well.

But what the hell are the people involved in the theft of The Atlantic Manuscript up to, Caldo thought. This is not a capitalist economy; this is not a case of finders keepers. Eventually, they’re going to handover their discovery to the government! Caldo was almost sure the location of the natural gas was mentioned in the complete volume of The Manuscript.

He started putting the scant copies back on the shelf and a thought crossed his mind. What if they never intend to turn over their find? Whoever they were, what if? What if there’s a plot to mine the gas secretly and smuggle it out of the country? What if it’s the stakeholders in the oil business that fetched the book; they know interest in oil would slack if this information gets out? Caldo’s head was beginning to whirl with multiple what ifs. He returned the copies and pulled out his phone.

            “This shit’s going to be all over the internet by nightfall, bozos. You watch if I don’t make it happen.” He placed a call through to his friend and colleague (the least he would make in a while). “Yo, Treach. Meet me at Cornrow College ASAP. Make that car of yours walk and talk this is urgent as hell.”

Caldo stepped outside the library and two men flanked him on both sides and showed him his new transport-a black Honda Accord-with the muzzle of a .357 S&W Magnum.

            “This way, sir. Step lively,” said one of his entourage, he had the looks of a pirate.

            “Damn,” Caldo said. “I should have known they’d come after the copies. Double damn.”

One of the bad guys had gone into the library and was now holding the loose sheets of copies of The Atlantic Manuscript.

Notes to myself:

The next time we see Caldo he’s in an interrogation room in a remote forest. He’d been excessively drugged and tortured to make him cooperate. They needed information. How many people had he told about The Atlantic Manuscript besides his friend, Treach (whom they claimed they’ve efficiently taken out of the way)? What did he really know about the book or its secrets? What did he know about The Organization? (That’s the folks in charge of the book theft and the killings.)

Every time we hear there’s an attempt to find an alternative to petroleum and every time the attempt comes up defeated. What really transpires behind the public eye?

DAY 14: Soul of Aegyptus

I started typing The Lady in Red as a possible title for this story (that’s another way of stating the name of the Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet or The Lady with the Red Clothes) but thought the figure which signifies the immortal nature of felines would be a more appropriate name. Cats are said to have nine lives, if this story roots for the hypothesis or not is what we are about to find out.

A young man who is half-human and half-something (due to some witty scientist’s creativity, of course) goes on a visit to the ancient city of Bubastis in Egypt. This man, who is a crossbreed of human genes and genetically modified (GM) genes of silverbacks, was a major cat-killer. He was cruel to cats around his childhood neighborhood. Maybe, (this is a draft, remember?) he hated cats as a child but the hatred morphed into chronic indifference in later years.

I’ll get better somewhere along the rewrite but let’s say, there’s this crippled kid’s cat this chap who I’d call Harris, saw off to a vicious annihilation. The cat was torn in different places or indifferent places-cut into so many tiny bits that Harris’ parents (who were stinking rich; who wanted a test tube baby cause they were too busy making money they didn’t have time-which is money- to produce their own baby) took him to the psychiatrist. For fear he might grow up and graduate into trying out his crude science on humans.

As he grew up, he bought cats and disposed of them in the most gruesome way, performing crude surgery on them.

All this actually started when Harris was an 8 year old. One day, one of the scientists who created him visited their house in the guise of a doctor, checking on the boy, was how he phrased it. He took him aside into one of the rooms and performed tests on him, injecting fluid and blasphemous stuff into him. Later that day, Harris performed his first operation; the neighbor’s cat was walking across Harris’ side of the backyard, that cold evening of December. (I might begin the story at this point in the rewrite.) Harris had on varied occasions played with the cat. So, he knew the cat’s name just as much as the cat knew him.

            “Hey, Dodge. Come here, boy.” The cat was a calico. The unsuspecting beast not aware of the evil presence lurking in the little boy who was once a friend, albeit a casual one, hopped off the picket fence and trudged to Harris the scary. Dodge the cat meowed as it reached out its paws to the boy who is about to snuff one (or all) of its nine lives. At first, Harris played with the animal, picked it up and tickled it behind the ears.

Then, there began a blurring of his mind. A kind of grayness overwhelmed him and he yielded to it (he couldn’t have successfully resisted it, anyway-it was within and therefore, beyond him.) Harris surrendered his will to the force of the Gray matter and it fed his mental repertoire with thoughts a child is not permitted to entertain. A joke is all it was to him when it first popped into his mind. The next time the thought returned, the violence of its intrusion in the child’s mind was a type of mental rape. Harris almost screamed, he bit down his lips to curb his enthusiasm.

Slowly but surely, he felt the hold of an evil genius subduing his control over his being. And that was probably, the human side of his personality. It’s dark on the inside of him. Had Harris asked the scientist who implanted it in him what it was called he would have told him; the shadow of the valley. It was the basest degree of the human emotion-an indifference to life, love and personal respect.

He squeezed the cat’s neck; his fingernails digging into meaty feline flesh. The cat, yet to comprehend the inevitable coming of its termination, let out a meowing yowl. Harris increased pressure on the squeeze and the cat’s meow was suppressed. It wrestled to free itself from Harris’ grasp and succeeded in extracting blood from the boy’s wrist. The blood did not discourage Harris instead, he squeezed harder and the cat’s eyes bulged and in one final quest for survival it lashed out with its paws and caught nothing in particular. And then, it stopped struggling and boarded the train of darkness to oblivion and beyond.

The entire business worked itself out in five minutes tops.

The scratch from the cat’s paw would have been a dead give-away when Dodge’s absence was discovered. (Harris had dumped the cat in the trash can under a heap of raccoon chow. Nobody would search for a cat in there, no matter how much they loved it.) Harris lied he got the bruise falling at the playground. The death toll had begun. Woe on all cats!

The next time we see Harris the scary he’s all grown up, out college and working. (What does Harris do for a living?) I need to put him in some job that requires him to travel a lot or maybe, he just loves pleasure.

Harris met this lady, a total stranger, at the airport and they got talking. The lady had an accent that Harris couldn’t quite place and which I’m really not prepared to write a library about. She had the tattoo of a cat on her left shoulder-an ancient looking simulacrum. But, Harris sensed something about her and even though, he couldn’t place it, he set it on the backburner of his mind to simmer until the right time.

Baset, as the lady was called told Harris her name was of ancient origin.

Okay, he got to the Land of the Ancient Pharaohs, and he and the lady struck some sort of acquaintance. Through the years, Harris thirst for cat-blood had traded places for female blood.

At a point, Bastet told him a story she called Soul of Antique Aegyptus about cats that took vengeance on two old townsfolk who hated cats and always killed any that came within an inch their gothic yard.

“When the people of the town came to the old fools cottage, they discovered their bones had been picked clean,” Baset finished, a smile played on her lips.

Come the day they get to visit the temple of Baset, the cat goddess in the ancient city of Bubastis. While tagging along with the little group of tourists, the two decided to get naughty and took a detour.

            “Let’s play cat and mouse,” Baset says.

Note to myself:

The plot deepens at this point. Harris tries to take advantage of Baset when he finds they are really all by themselves. He ain’t exactly the one doing it but Baset doesn’t know anything about the shadow of the valley or does she?

Sooner than later, Harris uncovers the truth for himself, Baset is the real cat-goddess incarnate. She came to avenge all the cats killed by Harris. But can her power open her eyes to the possibility that Harris is a product of corrupt science? A personality half human and half Something else?

There is a possibility of redemption for Harris, however. At a point where the battle between him and the cats called up by Baset grows fierce his human personality overwhelms the beastly nature within and somehow (as the revised version of the piece would reveal, Harris stops the fight and persuades the cats and Baset to come to terms with his own reality. He is not human in the complete sense of the word.

Do they (the cats) believe him? Even if they believe, how do they rescue him from the grip of the shadow of death? Do they kill him instead to forever free his damned soul?

*At what point does Harris find out he is under the influence of something beyond human?

Does he ever find out WHO put him through the ordeal?

This story is going to have a flare of science fiction, fantasy and of course, horror. I intend to make the three sub-genres move the plot forward-and especially, put the strobelight on Harris’ dilemma (the split personality dilemma).