DRAGON'S BREATH MAGAZINE
A Santa Barbara Telecom Publication
Issue Number One, September 1991

Originally published by Swagman and Colin Campbell.
Online edition edited by Zeylan.

Featured exclusively at The Swagazine Rack
http://www.swagazine.com/

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In this issue . . . 
             
  1. The Sovereigns of History ..... by The Bald Man
  2. Breakup ..... by The Bald Man
  3. Cinderella Gets Even ..... by JSK
  4. Coffee ..... by Jeffrey MacManus
  5. Drive ..... by Diet Rapture
  6. Icon, an Illusion ..... by Island Girl
  7. Look ..... by Death Penguin
  8. Lord of the Cockroaches ..... by Diablo
  9. One night ..... by Death Penguin
 10. Ostrow ..... by HOOKLA
 11. Solstice ..... by Swagman
 12. One Sunday Afternoon ..... by Wanderlust
 13. Monster Jennifer ..... by Voodoo Slide Rule
 14. Sungone ..... by Colin Campbell
 15. Blood Poems ..... by Death Penguin

  ** Ordering information

-----
     
The Sovereigns of History
by The Bald Man
                                      
   The sovereigns of history
   and the political leaders of today,
   have given us

      Segregation, oppression,
      sexism, and war;
  
      misinformation, depression,
      impoverishment, and now AIDS;
  
      dependency, self-contempt,
      false gods, and more.

   Isn't it time we gave them
   something in return?
     
-----     
     
Breaking Up
by The Bald Man
     
        At first Claire believed that she and Terry deserved each
   other -- they had things in common -- and at times she even felt
   flattered to be with him.
        She thought back on their fourth date: He had taken her to
   dinner at his parents' house. It was a large, cubical Spanish
   structure with wooden balconies on every second story room, a red
   tile roof, and stucco walls. An avocado tree dropped extraneous,
   unpicked fruit on a hill at one side of the house; it was too
   fructuous for its own good. There was a red brick porch at the back
   of the house with steps that touched upon a lush, manicured lawn.
   In one corner of the lawn grew a rounded orange tree.
         At the far end of the lawn was a bench, where the couple sat.
   An oak tree arched above the bench, covering them with warm shade.
   Somehow it seemed warmer under the shade. A boulder with a hollow
   on top of it rested beside the tree. The hollow in the boulder was
   filled with dark water; it was intended to be a bird bath, but now
   mosquito larvae hatched in it.
         Terry told Claire that he had so many memories attached to
   that yard. "You're stepping into my past," he joked. He pointed out
   an iron fence that he had painted, and a row of now tall trees he
   had planted.
         During dinner Terry's father looked at his son and the new
   girlfriend he was excited about, and smiled. They were all drinking
   wine; Claire had just turned twenty-one. Her anxieties about
   meeting Terry's parents were allayed; she could tell they liked
   her.
         Terry and Claire were similar mostly in things they couldn't
   see: they shared all the standard neuroses inflicted by a society
   based on the need to keep people buying compulsively -- neuroses
   about personal worth, and self-sufficiency, along with a wandering
   inclination to their ambitions. They were also similar in their
   need for education in romance, and -- more him than her -- the need
   for sex.
         From this angle the seedling relationship was entirely
   formulaic and unexceptional; 'they' could have been any couple from
   that age group, afflicted with the same emotional burdens and
   destined to endure the same disappointments and disasters -- along
   with the occasional sunsets and moments of rich joy, which are
   ultimately diluted if not completely smothered by the emotional
   dust of hard-learned realism. But the initial period was all
   attraction, sharing, and mutual enhancement.
         At first they were good for each other. He drew her out of
   her habitual introversion, encouraging her to be more responsive to
   her own impulses and desires. It could be said he helped claire
   become Claire. This may sound trite. But somewhere, at some time,
   the same metamorphosis probably takes place for everyone.
         Claire was good for Terry as well. He was more aware of her
   benefit than she was of his. The second time they slept together,
   Claire lay awake for an hour after the post-orgasmic Terry had
   dissolved into dreams. She sat up against the wall beside his bed
   and stared out the window at the night air and stars; they were all
   she could see, and the nocturnal imagery evoked a subtle dancing
   energy inside her. She felt, for the first time, like a partner in
   a true Relationship.
         This would not last long. At some level Terry began to feel
   like too much the beneficiary; if Claire could give him so much, he
   must be inferior. At moments when he was able to truly penetrate
   himself, he realized he felt inadequate -- both intellectually and
   creatively. This was tolerable because brains, he thought, matter
   only up until the point where charm and intuition and take over.
   Besides, Claire was not conceited about it.
         Claire was annoyed by Terry's way of being compulsively
   social. "Terry, why do you always have to be going someplace? I
   mean, look at this apartment; it's a perfectly good place. Over
   here there's a balcony, and you have a brand new VCR you've never
   even used. This place could be Home to you if you didn't have to
   spend every waking moment at the cafe, or the billiards joint, or
   your friends' houses."
         They were in the dining room. He stood with his arm resting
   on the back of a chair. "Claire, if you don't like my friends you
   can say so."
         "Who said anything about your friends? They're fine, but I'd
   like to be alone with you once in a while. I feel like I'm having a
   relationship with Terry and Company. The only times we're alone is
   when you want to have sex. I'm just hoping you never decide to get
   into group sex." When Claire became angry she would start yelling.
         His voice only became quieter. "Claire, I Like to be social."
         "Well, I Like to eat candy bars; that doesn't mean I've
   devoted my life to chocolate. Don't you understand that it might be
   good for me if we could be alone with you once in a while?"
         He sighed. "To do what? Sit around and talk?"
         She used a fist for emphasis: "Yes! Or anything where we're
   both conscious, and not spun into delirium with lust."
         "Well, maybe we have different ideas about what to, you know,
   about what relationships are for."
         "Of course we do! Don't be such an idiot. That doesn't mean
   we can't make mutual compromises."
         He was silent, and would not talk to her for several hours.
   They were both lying in his bed.
         With her frustration unresolved she could not get to sleep.
   She found herself staring out the window. The night poured in
   chilly and dark.
         "What are you thinking about?" His voice surprised her; she
   hadn't known he was awake. She didn't know how to answer: she had
   been thinking that he was getting repetitive. And unexciting.
   Sexual excitement vanishes after intercourse; when you give it to
   someone they use it like a palm full of liquid soap, then three
   minutes later it's gone.
         "I'm just looking at the sky." She could feel him turn to
   look out the window with her. He moved closer to her, and
   eventually put his arm over her side. Having sex that evening was
   like walking up a steep city hill, with nothing to see from the top
   but smog.
         Terry alternated between feelings of sullen resentment and
   joyous gratitude for Claire. She thought to herself, I wish he'd
   just make up his damn mind. He noticed she was often irritated by
   him. This made him uncomfortable and nervous, and in that state he
   became inattentive and prone to error, which irritated her even
   more.
         One evening they were going to a party -- he had talked her
   into it -- and he took a wrong turn. "Terry, will you pay
   attention? I mean have you suddenly decided to drive to Nebraska
   rather than the West Side?"
         "Jeez! It was just a wrong turn."
         "Well, if you were paying attention you wouldn't have made a
   wrong turn." He felt flustered and assailed.
         "Yeah, of course, I know."
         "Then why the hell did you -- oh, never mind." He noticed the
   next appropriate turn blur past. "Terry, for chrissake! What the
   hell is the matter with you? Stop being a moron!"
         They had been sleeping together at his house every evening;
   despite the deterioration of their affection, this pattern lasted
   for some time; he wanted sex, and she did not like sleeping alone.
         Finally this began changing. One evening she never received
   his usual call. She dialed his number several times but there was
   no answer. The next afternoon Claire asked why he hadn't answered
   the phone. She expected Terry to say that he had been so tired the
   day before, he unintentionally fell asleep before inviting her
   over. But when he seemed to evade the question, it struck her that
   he had been with someone else. She wondered if this was paranoid,
   but various discoveries would soon confirm her suspicion. One
   evening Claire offered to go to one of his friend's houses. He
   seemed surprised, but they went. Terry's friends looked baffled at
   her appearance, and they regarded her with some embarrassment. It
   was plain that they hadn't expected to see her again.
         At one point during the evening, she overheard one of Terry's
   friends asking him secretively, "So how are things going with
   Tracy?" Claire wasn't surprised that he was seeing someone else,
   and that it was Tracy; they had been casual friends for months, and
   they had a lot in common. But what dawned on Claire was that he had
   been seeing Tracy behind her back for almost a month.
         There had been several evenings when she asked him what he
   had done that day and he stumbled, then avoided a direct answer.
   And on one occasion Claire had found a woman's hairclip on the
   desk. "Where did this come from, Terry?"
         "Oh, that's, you know, that's been there for months. From
   when my sister visited." This seemed impossible; she would have
   noticed it earlier. Later Terry would deny that he'd been seeing
   Tracy for so long, but Claire knew he was lying. It was pathetic
   that he needed to lie.
         Claire felt disillusioned and hurt. This puzzled her; why did
   she feel hurt? She herself had considered seeing someone else on
   the side. And besides, why should she be bothered? She was rapidly
   losing interest in Terry. Things that used to seem fascinating and
   unique in him now seemed vexatious and trite.
         Terry felt guilty about seeing Tracy, but reminded himself
   that if Claire was satisfying him -- if she were being as attentive
   a lover as he was -- he wouldn't need to see someone else. Still,
   he felt guilty, and he loathed himself for it. And he loathed
   himself for feeling anxious that she might confront him.
         Claire lay in her own bed one night, staring out the window.
   She saw the dark slant of the neighbor's roof, and the moon was
   out. She thought of Terry in bed with Tracy. Did she ever enter his
   mind while the new girlfriend was there? Their relationship had not
   even officially ended. Officially? Whatever that meant. Why was
   neither of them motivated to end the lingering affair? Claire had
   the chilling thought that she was still attached to him. Why? Could
   have all those hours of intimacy have ingrained something on her
   that she couldn't just undo at will?
         Claire turned on the light to go the bathroom. When she
   returned, she found her ten-year-old sister standing in the doorway
   in a nightgown. Her hair was mussed and she looked groggy. "Hi,
   Kim. What's up?"
         Kim paused. "Do you ever go to Terry's house anymore,
   Claire?"
         Claire was taken aback by this; her little sister sounded
   sad. "Yes, sometimes. Why?"
         "Me and Daddy ran into him at the store today, and he sad bad
   things about you."
         Claire felt strained. "All right, Kim. Go back to sleep now."

         "I don't know why you keep seeing that chick," Tracy told
   Terry. They were sitting on his balcony together. He felt that she
   was pressuring him to end things with Claire. He was flattered, and
   he smiled.
         "I mean I've seen you with her enough times to know that
   she's a total bitch to you. She doesn't deserve you at all."
         "I don't know. I'll just, you know, let it die. I don't want
   to make the effort." He wondered if his lie showed; he was afraid
   she would make him feel horrible if he tried to end things
   conclusively. She still had emotionalinfluence on him, and this was
   manifest in his partial desire that Claire would become cool again;
   that she'd start being nice to him like in the first couple of
   months. This seemed impossible, and while Terry felt like he was
   cheating Tracy out of a real relationship, the sentiment for Claire
   remained. "You know, Tracy? Almost all the time we spend together,
   it's just the two of us. I never used to do that. I mean, just
   spending time alone with just one person. But I like it."
   
-----
     
Steven King Rewrites Perrault
or, Cinderella Gets Even
by John Kalstrom
     
         Cinderella pulled the well-oiled .45 from under her tattered
   dress and leveled it.
         "Whaaat?" said the stupefied Evil Godmother.
         "Anarchy now!" Cinderella screamed. The hammer slammed down,
   ripping the silence with its amplified echo. The slug sunk home,
   finding a rib that slammed the obese body against the wall.
         The Evil Godmother glared back through a reddening haze, then
   slid down the wall to lie still, the frothing blood running from
   the twisted mouth to form a horrible pool at her side.
         Cinderella heard the running footsteps, and had the automatic
   off the floor even as the door crashed open. She rolled aside as
   the axe blade bit into the table behind her, then sprayed a run of
   bullets into the stepsister's back, covering the antique with
   bright liquid.
         The last stepsister dodged twice, evading Cinderella's fire,
   then ran down the darkened hallway. Cinderella calmly centered the
   gun and squeezed off single shots until she heard the body thump
   against the floor. The stepsister screamed, and screamed again, as
   Cinderella continued to fire every few seconds, waiting for the
   agony to relent each time. ...
         The Prince had been pressing Cinderella all morning for an
   explanation to the mysteries that enshrouded her past. "Come, dear,
   there should be no secrets between us. Tell me about your
   childhood, your family, where you lived."
         "All right!" Cinderella shrieked. She stared hard at the
   Prince for a moment, then her tensed mouth relaxed -- with resolve.
   "Both of my parents were killed when I was young in an unfortunate
   accident," Cinderella began.
         "My adopted family blamed me for my stepfather's suicide,
   just because I was new. They treated me terribly..."
         The Prince saw Cinderella's hand as it crept down into her
   handbag, but was unable to move as he heard the metallic click...

-----                                      
                                      
Coffee
by Jeffrey MacManus
     
         As he poured hot coffee along the length of his live-in
   girlfriend's quivering calves, Juan thought of just how lucky he
   was. Lucky to have a girlfriend who'd give in to his incessant
   demands, and lucky to have such demands in the first place.
         His girlfriend, Maria, was lying on her back, blindfolded,
   and tied to a pair of special hooks mounted in the bathtub. The tub
   was half-full of lukewarm water turned brown by the constant
   application of warm French Roast coffee to her legs, genitals, and
   belly. Juan had been pouring it onto her body for over an hour, and
   her thighs were begin-ning to redden. She had great thighs, by the
   way.
         "Ah," his girlfriend said. "That's too hot."
         "Sorry," Juan said half-heartedly, applying an ice cube to
   the injured area. But he continued to pour and pour, and pretty
   soon she began to wonder if he was going to fuck her or not. And if
   so, how.
         In the next room, Maria could hear the automatic-drip coffee
   maker brewing up another pot.
         Juan had opened a window to the outside right after he'd
   blindfolded her, and three guys from the neighborhood were outside
   with camcorders. A small group of neighborhood boys was also there,
   pointing, talking quietly to each other, and nonchalantly
   scratching their crotches from time to time. And, unbeknownst to
   any of them, a raccoon had taken up position in the bushes outside
   the house, but was quickly losing interest.
         "I'm starting to get a cramp in my neck," Maria said.
         "Shut up," Juan said. When the blindfold went on, he was
   boss.
         It was getting late, and the half-dozen boys watching outside
   should have been getting home. But they stayed around as Juan began
   beating Maria somewhat savagely about the thighs and buttocks with
   the back of a heated hairbrush.
         "Ah!" Maria said. "That's too hard!"
         "Shut up," Juan said.
         One of the boys from outside came closer to the window,
   propelled as if by some moral slingshot. The boy, who could be no
   older than nine, wore a red baseball cap that had a white letter O
   in the middle of it. He was dirty, too: he'd been playing and
   running around all day. And he didn't have the slightest idea what
   was going on in Juan and Maria's bathroom.
         "Hey," the boy said.
         "Who's that?" Maria said.
         Outside, the boy's friends and the men with the camcorders
   scurried away, realizing the jig was undoubtedly up.
         "What are you doing to her?" the boy asked.
         "None of your fucking business," Juan said, reaching to close
   the bathroom window. "Take a fucking hike."
         But the kid was too fast for him. In a flash, he'd grabbed
   hold of the window-ledge, pulled himself up onto the sill, and
   plunged into the bathroom, knocking Juan over.
         Overpowering Juan wasn't too difficult, even for the
   nine-year-old. Juan was only five-foot-two, and he had been
   drinking for the past seven hours, so he fell over quickly after
   wrestling with the boy for a few minutes.
         "What's going on?" Maria asked. "What's happening?"
         She struggled to get loose from her binding, but could not -
   Juan tied a mean knot.
         But now Juan was unconscious on the floor of the bathroom,
   bleeding from his left ear after striking the side of the sink.
         It was only the woman and the boy now.
         "What's your name, lady?" the boy asked.
         "Maria," she said. "Who are you?"
         "I'd better not say," the boy said. "Do you like this? All
   this? Do you like it?"
         "Uh," the woman said. "Yes."
         The boy looked around for awhile, closed the bathroom window,
   and made sure the door to the bathroom was locked. He then picked
   up the pitcher full of hot coffee and picked up where Juan had left
   off.

-----
                                      
The Drive
by Diet Rapture
     
         It was a bad night to be out driving but William didn't have
   much choice. He had to keep driving eastward, to his hometown.
         Rain drummed on the windshield and seemed to mock him and his
   condition. William found it creepy that the rain followed the
   patterns of his thoughts, growing stronger as his mind pounded with
   remorse and easing while he found more comfortable things to dwell
   on. At least he had some time off work -- his boss awarded it for
   diligence -- which would do wonders for his blood pressure.
         The rain subsided but William's mind pitifully staggered.
   What kind of husband leaves his home to drive thousands of miles
   and forgets to say Goodbye to his wife? What kind of father is so
   cold as to leave on a trip without even hugging his little girl?
         The rain beat down harder, angrier. Road signs drifted by
   ominously on the Nebraska highway; they told him it was too late to
   turn back, that his wife and child would have to get by without
   him. Port Jefferson was the his destination. Finally, after 30
   years, he was going to visit his mother's grave. She was so dearly
   loved by William and now he had the chance to be a little closer
   again.
         Whenever William thought about his hometown he got a tingling
   sensation down his spine and he shivered. He didn't know why,
   really. He got a mental picture of his home, although blurred by
   time; he could see the dark blue wood panels making up most of the
   house, his bedroom window on the second story, a single tree in the
   front yard and the thorny bushes surrounding it. There was no fence
   in the front yard and it made the entire picture look awkward and
   naked, as if thieves had stolen that part from his memory but left
   it in his soul.
         William tried to imagine various fences and gates guarding
   the yard: dark blue ones, matching the house; stout white ones;
   even a row of hedges, but none of the combinations would complete
   the memory.
         The rain was shifting often; sometimes fierce, then dwindling
   and then ferocious again. William wondered if the downpour as a
   whole was changing or if he was simply driving through different
   layers. He decided that the rain was constant and this made him
   complacent. But he didn't know why.
         William spotted a pair of headlights in the distance. He
   hadn't passed a car for hours. The approaching lights grew more
   intense, making William's eyes dilate painfully. He squinted and
   tried to focus on the roadside, holding his left hand up as a
   shield for his throbbing, teary eyes. Still, the light enveloped
   him, encased him in a mold of stagnant energy. William couldn't
   move.
         The light evaporated just in time for William to helplessly
   watch himself drive over the edge of a ditch. Everything fell
   silent as the car drifted through the air. The passenger side was
   the first to hit ground. William went unconscious as the car rolled
   upside down and rocked until stopping. William squinted again, at
   the sun beaming off his side-mirror. It felt good, like he was
   scratching an itch behind eyes, but the sensation rapidly became
   numb. Numbness spread from his pupils to his eyelids, and from his
   eyelids to his entire face. Soon, his whole body was numb, like his
   skin was about six inches thick and made of rubber. William enjoyed
   the tingling that followed for hours. With a blank, stale smile,
   William watched the sunlight on the ground recede out of sight. He
   watched the stars develop and fade away in his mirror.
         Later, he watched the sunlight appear on the ground again and
   patiently awaited its visit in the mirror. When it came, William
   was in ecstasy. As the sun began its departure, William looked over
   to the interior mirror for his own reflection but it wasn't pointed
   at him; a tree was in the mirror, not William.
         William pushed open the door and crawled out of his car. The
   first thing he noticed was the sky; it was a reddish orange hue, as
   if the sunset had bled into the rest of the sky. He admired the
   color for a moment and then started out of the ditch. The climb out
   was effortless. At the edge, he looked into the distance and saw a
   house. It seemed to balance on the skyline, a silhouette on the
   warm horizon. The cogent heat from above gave him energy; he had to
   walk to the house.
         Parts of the house slowly came into view. The window on the
   second story reflected a rosy glow from the sky. William remembered
   staining the wallpaper in that room with crayons, and his mother
   yelling at him for it. There was a full clothesline out front, with
   a particular pair of jeans on it. They were William's favorite
   pair, although almost completely ripped in half. The damage
   occurred while he was on top of a fence trying to escape the
   neighbor's hound, unsuccessfully. William's mother was standing
   behind those jeans, making sure they were securely fastened to the
   line. She found the jeans to be improper but allowed William to
   wear them anyway (with a grimace here or there).
         William smiled when he saw the fence around the yard. It was
   a modest fence made of a metal that seemed to contain the sky in
   it. Not the ordinary sky, but the present one, exuding an inspiring
   surge of warmth.
         William opened the gate and entered the yard. There was love
   here, and William cried when he felt it. His mother walked to him
   and wiped the tears from his cheeks and kissed him. She smiled when
   they embraced, and cried. William would say goodbye to his lovely
   wife and child, in time.
   
-----
                                      
Icon
An illusion by Island Girl
     
         The warmth captured within invisible polymer walls. One side
   maintained under constant scrutiny by electronics. Reading and
   adjusting accordingly. Another soaking and retaining only
   necessities while shielding changes from the outside so as not to
   effect changes from within.
         Unconditional from spirits free flowing between the walls
   uncertain of the conflicting powers overtaking old natural laws and
   fighting what is natural and true. Constant conflict yet death
   overpowers both. Neither can exist yet this condition persists to
   survive and yet not grow. Death is endorsed but just about no new
   addition. That is controlled due to the conditions within.
         Spirits will have no want of the conditional controls yet
   they are drawn stronger and required to exists in both equally in
   limited ways. Time is not required, time is a ever present harmony
   of what is to exist and the oncoming end and it is this that
   tempers the spirits.
         One such spirit, Icon, wants part in this. The enormous
   strength that this would provide for pleasure. Icon can't resist
   the pleasure surmounting within this very special place. Reserved
   as a place of worship but no god placed the air within with any
   intent or purpose for which it was designed. The challenge that
   this would present and the war that was to begin was never present
   until now. Before Icon, there was only the challenge and now before
   Icon was the white kings first pawn open. Black kings move...
         Icon knew the passion was burning more fiercely now. The
   encapsulation of these separate environments was strongly inviting.
   Icon wanted most of all to feel the control and power like a god
   and for this passion he would have to battle the war of power and
   the possibility of all lost to be overthrown by any of these
   separate environments to those of the Seekers. Those who send the
   electronic impulses, they hold the control and somehow he would
   have to control them to perfect the environments in which he would
   have to survive.
         The Seekers were compiling the last of the inventory and
   storing it very carefully. In the next hour the sealing would begin
   and nothing would be allowed to enter or exit for two years. If
   anything should die in any of the environments, it will remain in
   frozen suspension so as it could be studied for causes, and
   likewise if anything should be borne it must struggle for a place
   within. The Seekers have accounted for everything within the
   foundation down to most every DNA however they were blind to the
   spirit of Icon. Icon as well was blind to their spirits.
         Temperatures were rising more quickly this early morning.
   Already the lizards scurried along from rock to rock resting in the
   shade before the tasting senses of their flicking tongues would
   make them race for cover, it could have been Icon. Icon moved in
   more closely now. The entrance to the storage warehouse doors were
   wedged open to accept the final shipment in. These doors would be
   sealed as all the other doors had been. The tally final, Seekers
   pushing buttons that control the doors click into place. Icon
   flings out in all capacity that he can hold a final breath of
   unconditioned air and breathes inward the first breath of control.
   It moved within him like cold icy water. Much too cold to taste and
   giving nothing.
         Being very careful with his movements, waiting for any
   detection or alarm of his passing through he embraces everything
   within. Everything is already producing, growing and giving from
   within these very walls. The delicacy from which everything was
   plucked from and sterilized begins new transmissions and develops
   new connections to form new homes. Icon shakes from the slavery to
   make sure his are genuinely rebellious and ready for war. The first
   encounter could be costly and he would prepare with a defiant and
   war like presence.
         A Seeker awaiting in the damp and green chamber of growth is
   aware of the spinal throb from the joints shooting upward to his
   brain. Quickly and with his mind still fixed on the experiment he
   was performing starts taking second looks from the shadowed fields
   of his vision. Staring at the irrigated puddle at himself he has
   doubts but then the root hairs pull tight and makes out in the
   reflection on the puddle the Icon. Hesitating and with arm gestures
   he knows it's no longer just his reflection but that of another.
   Icon makes his presence known.
         "Seeker? You can't keep me out of any of your sealed chambers
   of life cycles. I can be of great comfort to you."
         "It's far to early for me to start talking to myself. I've
   only just started sealing the outermost doors."
         "But you called out for the war yourself!" Icon is getting a
   smirk smile out of this Seeker.
         "War!?"
         "You can honor me knowing that you were the first to call
   upon me."
         "But we have no war here? And I honor no one!"
         "You started it yourselves, Seeker?"
         "I am a Seeker?"
         "Yes, and I am Icon. The one you omitted into this makeshift
   environment of control yet you cannot continue without me."
         "What makes you so sure I need you?"
         "Life has been given here and with life the power to control.
   I come to control, and possess the power of life."
         "You make me talk to you as if you were here. Yet I know you
   do not exist."
         "Then neither will you exist here."
         Icon merges his breath with this Seeker. The Seeker screams
   and throws his body around thrashing himself while the Icon takes
   the Seekers spirit in both hands and molds it into a small pea
   sized kernel and tosses it into the experiment in which the Seeker
   was performing.
         "There now I have you breeding the spirit of contradiction
   and dishonor and so you do me great homage."
         Icon leaves the chamber and continues on for Seekers.
   
-----
                                      
Look
by Death Penguin
     
         This big brawny dude looks at me menacingly from across the
   room. So I look at him. He looks at me. I look at him. He looks at
   me. I look at him. He looks at me. I look at him.
         I notice that he's still looking at me. I feign looking away
   to see if I can catch him looking at me. He looks at me. I look at
   him. He looks at me.
         I light a cigarette. He looks at me. I look at him. He looks
   at me. I look at him. He looks at me. I notice that he's looking at
   me. He looks at me. I look at him. He looks at me.
         I notice that I don't smoke and that I don't have any
   cigarettes and that I have set my index finger on fire and that it
   has burned halfway down my hand.
         He looks at me. I look at my hand. He looks at my hand. We
   both look at my hand. I look at him. He is still looking at my
   hand.
         I look back at my hand. My knuckle is burning to the wrist.
   He looks at my wrist. I look at him. He looks back at me. I look at
   him. He looks at me. I look at him. He looks at me. I look at him.
         He almost looks back at me but the pain suddenly hits my dull
   nerves and I let out a whelp that would down a jet. He looks at me.
   I look at him. He looks at me. I start to pass out. He looks at me.
         I am passing out. He looks at me as I fall to the floor. I
   fall to the floor. He looks at me. I look up at him. He looks at
   me. I pass out.
         I look at nothing. I look at nothing. I look at nothing. I
   look at nothing. I continue to look at nothing.
         I remain unconscious, looking at nothing. I look at nothing.
         I don't know if he's looking at me.

-----                                      
                                      
Lord of the Cockroaches
By Michal Todorovic
     
        After waking to music blaring from my radio alarm clock, a
   feeling swept over me that my life was about to be changed forever.
   No longer would it be lonely and meaningless. Expecting nothing
   less than a dozen beautiful, scantily dressed belly dancers
   prancing about in my bedroom, I opened my eyes, sat up in bed and
   looked around me. My expectations were cruelly crushed as a huge,
   ugly, hairy and diseased cockroach crawled across the carpet,
   leaving behind him a trail of slime. Totally disgusted at the
   thought of killing it with my bare hands, I slowly reached for a
   newspaper from the night stand. I then dived at the cockroach. The
   cockroach, sensing danger from my brilliantly executed attack,
   changed direction and crawled for the garbage can. I landed in a
   crouch, and flung myself between the garbage and the bug. The
   cockroach dove for the sink, landed in a pot full of six month old
   lasagna, then tunnelled its way out of sight. My strategy was
   obviously lacking. The cockroach was far too cunning to be trapped
   by a mere newspaper attack; much more powerful artillery was
   necessary.
        I pulled from a drawer my .22 caliber CO2 Crossman air gun. I
   then turned on the faucet to flood the pot. To avoid drowning, the
   cockroach would have to flee the pot. At that point, I planned to
   shoot its head off. Feeling that the kill was imminent, I
   snickered, chortled, and choked. The realization came over me that
   I didn't know how to chortle. After my choking subsided, I waited
   to ambush the cockroach.
        My first shot went wild as the cockroach burst out of the sink
   yelling, "I think, therefore I am!" It began to run away. I gave
   chase, not wishing to have any yelling cockroaches in my home, and
   fired two more pellets at the bug. The second pellet found its
   mark; it knocked the cockroach across the room. As it lied still, I
   felt sorry for it; such a courageous opponent should not have died
   such an unworthy death. As if the gods themselves had overheard my
   thoughts, it opened up its eyes and looked at me accusingly. The
   cockroach then began chasing me. Terrified, I ran through the
   hallway, and lunged for the front door. Suddenly the realization
   came over me that I ran away from a cockroach. I swung around,
   blasted at the bug the three remaining pellets in my clip, quickly
   reloaded, and fired another six rounds. The cockroach,
   acknowledging my superior firepower, turned, and crawled for the
   bathroom. I chased after him with yet another new clip in the gun
   while my lungs spewed Indian war cries. The bug somehow eluded my
   expert firing with deft maneuvers, and dove into a crack near the
   toilet. I plastered up the crack, happy with the victory just
   snatched away from the bad breath of defeat.
        After deciding the lasagna caused the cockroach's strange
   behavior, I sent some to a notable biological engineer who did
   research for the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was
   never seen from again. Some newspapers printed reports of a
   bird-man flying around and looking into the windows of the women's
   dormitories on the UCSB campus. Others reported that hundreds of
   pigeons were found around the UCSB campus with their entrails eaten
   out. These events were dismissed as some kind of fraternity
   practical joke.
        The cockroaches soon totally infested my apartment. The only
   form of pest control I could afford was to shoot the little buggers
   with pellets from my air gun. There were more than one species of
   cockroach. The species had no fundamental differences between them:
   they all splattered the same way when shot. The creatures had
   learned English, and their conversations revealed that they felt I
   was a god. They believed the pellets constantly fired upon them
   were bolts of judgment from their cockroach heaven. Some
   organizations claimed anyone shot was a sinner. These organizations
   forced the masses to do what they wanted by threatening the
   dissidents with eternal damnation in their cockroach hell. On the
   other end of the scale a different organization maintained not only
   that I was not a god, but did not exist. These schools of thought
   constantly battled; they not only fought each other, but amongst
   themselves because each held a different view on how I should, or
   should not, be. What irritated me was that no one had come over and
   asked me if I existed, and if so, whether I considered myself a
   god. Not only was my existence in question, but my very godhood; it
   would have been only courteous to allow me in the discussion.
        All you people out there are probably thinking I was on some
   kind of incredible ego trip because someone considered me a god.
   This was not a unique occurrence. People always ask me, "Who the
   hell are you, Jesus Christ?" I point out the mistake in identity,
   and let the people's hopes down gently. I am a great being, but not
   yet on His level. I advise the people to come back in a few years,
   and then they can worship me as they rightly should.
        Over the holidays a few of my friends took me to their cabin
   in the mountains. Despite myself, I began to miss the cockroaches
   and all the stupid things they did. After understanding that my
   apartment held the first known intelligent non-humans, I discovered
   the insidious plots against my life. People were out to get me for
   my cockroaches. Even my friends were in on it, for they looked at
   me strangely when the conversation turned to cockroaches. They
   could not prevent my escape home.
        My anticipation reached a peak on approaching the apartment. I
   pulled out my old trusty air gun, took it off safety, cocked it,
   and proceeded to make a paramilitary assault against any intruders
   in the apartment. I felt the presence of beings in there. Beings
   waiting for me. Beings eager to blow my head off if given the
   chance. They probably weren't very friendly either.
        I prowled up to the apartment door, like James Bond, the super
   spy behind enemy lines. As my adrenalin peaked, I kicked in the
   door, ready for almost anything. But not for what greeted me
   inside. I screamed in utter agony. Large quantities of smoke
   billowed passed me. I closed my eyes and tried praying to myself,
   but it didn't go away! I moaned to the heavens and went to meet
   destiny in the apartment.
        The cockroaches had developed a sophisticated civilization.
   They turned on all the water faucets to full blast to run water
   through turbines which produced electricity. As a result, the sinks
   flooded over. The cockroaches used the newly formed lakes and
   rivers in a variety of ways. A sophisticated boating system
   developed; they went to and from many places by using the water.
   There was a flurry of activity as the cockroaches went back and
   forth. They seemingly had a lot to do, but all they did was go back
   and forth. On the oceans bigger ships carried things around for no
   apparent reason.
        Wherever the apartment remained dry, the cockroaches burned
   the carpet as a source of fuel for the factories. The factories
   produced many objects, and these objects seemed quite important to
   the cockroaches. Their use was not immediately apparent, but there
   must have been many major applications because the cockroaches
   devoted a great deal of energy to building them. The cockroaches
   knocked huge holes in the walls where any walls remained. Several
   places where I distinctly remember seeing walls were empty. This
   was due to no imagination on my part. All the walls around the
   bathroom were gone.
        I stared at the wanton destruction to my home, closed my eyes,
   and looked at it some more. My anger rose. Two choices on my next
   plan of action were before me. The first was to go on a rampage,
   kill every one of the little menaces, stamp out their society, and
   totally destroy any evidence of their existence for my lost two
   hundred dollar deposit. The second was to observe them, write a
   paper on them and win a Nobel prize or something. Or there was
   revenge. My eyes grew wide. Revenge. What a pretty word. I could
   say it all day. I tried to come up with a way to have both the
   revenge and the Nobel prize. I would only kill a few of them. With
   my trusty air gun. I sniggered, then almost chortled, stopping
   myself in time because I can't chortle. I opened fire on the table,
   and screeched my maniacal laugh while sending hundreds of
   cockroaches to their deaths. A structure fell, crushing several
   helpless victims. After climaxing as several hundred cockroaches
   died in a fire, I calmed down, went to my bed and slept happily.
        Later that week I began an in-depth study of the cockroach
   world. They organized together into groups according to race, and
   these groups defended pieces of property, like the garbage can and
   the toilet, with their lives. The white cockroaches inhabited the
   bathroom, which seemed to be the most prosperous area due to the
   constant partying. At least the ones who controlled the factories
   had a good time, but for the rest a different way of life
   prevailed. They were in a state of helplessness. Some couldn't even
   keep theirlittle baby cockroaches fed. I felt badly about this, but
   not badly enough to give them any of my hard earned food. The
   factories were located inside the toilet, and by flushing the
   toilet they produced hydroelectric power.
        Most of the cockroaches were located to the East of the
   bathroom. One little group of blue cockroaches was worse off than
   the others. No one bought the useless objects, so no one made them,
   and everyone became unhappy. The red cockroaches practiced a
   strange custom of voting with only one candidate on the ballot.
   When elected he proceeded to execute and torture all those whom he
   did not like. The reds wore little fur lined caps because they were
   next to the open refrigerator and freezer.
         The apartment's general economic condition took a turn for
   the worse. To aggravate the situation, the toilet in the white land
   flooded and destroyed most of the factories. Everyone ran around
   scared, and some of the big fat whites jumped from the top of the
   toilet seat, splattering their bodies against the floor, making a
   big mess which no one seemed to want to clean up. All the water in
   the toilet then disappeared. Despite the valiant efforts of the
   whites, the water did not return, and all the crops died. The
   entire fabric of the white civilization had come apart, and no one
   could do a thing about it. This catastrophe became known as "The
   Great Flushing," and caused an economic collapse in the rest of the
   apartment.
         The economic collapse devastated my spirit, so I decide to
   bake a cake. Unfortunately my cake did not even remotely resemble
   the picture in the recipe book. Disgusted, I threw it on the floor.
   A skinny cockroach with a Charlie Chaplin mustache saw me do this.
   He dove for the cake. After he finished eating, it seemed his
   actions were a little hasty for he made choking sounds. The
   whiskers on Charlie's face trembled. His body shivered. He looked
   extremely worried that he wouldn't be able to keep his new found
   meal, so he contorted his mouth trying to keep it in. He shook all
   over, his eyes glazed, and he foamed at the mouth. His shaking
   deteriorated into a cataclysm of rolling on the ground which
   closely resembled human break dancing. The cataclysm climaxed,
   then, as quickly as it had come, it passed. Charlie's eyes gleamed
   insanely. He vaulted up on a pedestal, and made a speech which is
   recorded here.
        "Cockroaches of the Blue Land, I know how to solve the
   problems of our time!" Charlie began. Most of his fellow
   cockroaches just looked at him strangely, for they had witnessed
   his cataclysm, but Charlie continued undaunted. "I know the ones
   who have caused our present difficulties." A few blues began to
   listen to him, and they too developed an insane gleam in their
   eyes. "Elements in our society exist," Charlie said, "which corrupt
   the very fabric of our lives and profit from our misery! They are
   all evil down to the core. They are responsible for the starving of
   our children, and halting the production of the objects you love.
   Their insidious plot has hurt every sector of not only our country,
   but of the entire apartment!" The developing crowd gasped at this
   news; they wanted to find the ones responsible and execute them
   all. Charlie continued, "They are strong now because they are not
   known. Once we expose their activities to the apartment, we will
   punish them. But they are everywhere! Even amongst you I see them."
   Everyone in the crowd looked at each other, trying to find the ones
   responsible for the catastrophes in the apartment. "I will reveal
   them to you now. They... are... the ..." he paused now, for the
   dramatic effect, then said the final word, "greens!"
        All the greens in the crowd looked up wide eyed, realizing
   their imminent visit to the cockroach heaven might be hurried
   because of their present situation. The other cockroaches stared at
   the greens, waiting for Charlie to set a precedent. And he did.
   Charlie jumped into the crowd, and mashed one of the greens with a
   club. Everyone in the crowd followed suit. Charlie then began a
   march; increasingly cockroaches followed him. As they walked, they
   killed any greens they came upon. They then came to the Blue
   Parliament Building.
        Charlie walked up to the Blue leader, and whispered in his
   ear, "If you don't give me command of this country, my followers
   will cut you up into little pieces, and I'll take it anyway." The
   Blue Leader stepped down. The crowd cheered. Everyone walked by
   Charlie and said "Hi Charlie," to him. They got some kind of thrill
   out of this, and said, "Hi Charlie," to anyone who passed, whether
   their name was Charlie or not. Charlie started production of the
   useless objects, but among them he kept some for himself. Weapons.
        Charlie then began speaking again. "See the happiness we have
   brought upon our society? Now we must bring it upon the rest of the
   apartment!" He used his armies to invade all the bordering
   countries. The Cockroach War began.
        The war machine of the blues came out from the table,
   spreading like vermin, along with their allies to the East, the
   yellows. Fearless cockroaches fought to try to stop the onslaught,
   dying for the Salt and Pepper Shaker, the Cereal Bowl, and the
   Garbage Can. Charlie laughed in delight as he watched his armies,
   then he began to chortle. He must have been a great cockroach; even
   I can't chortle. After heroic efforts by the anti-blue alliance who
   yelled things like, "Damn the toothpicks, full speed ahead!" they
   defeated the blues. All that remained were the yellows.
        The whites found my glow-in-the-dark watch. They used the
   radium it contained to detonate a very small nuclear bomb. The next
   day two mushroom clouds appeared in the yellow home land. The war
   had ended.
        After the whites exploded the nuclear device, I became afraid
   of the cockroaches. They never before created a weapon more
   powerful than my trusty air gun. I ran away from the apartment,
   hoping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wouldn't find the bombs
   the cockroaches built. Many of my possessions, like the
   glow-in-the-dark balls and posters, could conceivably be used to
   build nuclear devices. If the cockroaches created three nuclear
   explosions, each about a foot high and wide, from just the radium
   in my watch, then the rest of the radium could blow up my
   apartment. Or the apartment complex. Maybe it could take out the
   entire block. It would look great in my defense for killing five
   thousand people when I'd say, "The cockroaches did it." So I
   decided to return home, salvage my stuff and run to Canada.
        I entered the apartment, carefully eyeing the cockroaches,
   making sure that none would nuke me. While scampering across the
   hallway, an unpleasant voice informed me that I was again running
   away from cockroaches. The voice irked me, and challenged my very
   godhood, so I decided to stay and continue my observations of the
   critters. Besides, the nuclear explosions were only a foot high and
   a little radiation poisoning never hurt anyone.
        Some intense negotiations went on between the whites and the
   reds, who turned from allies during the Cockroach War, to mortal
   enemy. Recorded here is one of the negotiation conferences.
        "Hello comrade."
        "How many times have I told you never to call me comrade, you
   red commie."
        "All right comrade, vat did ve discuss during the last
   meeting?"
        "You know that Mikilov took the notes during the last meeting.
   Mikilov, you bolshevik menace, why don't you read your notes?"
        "Ve agreed that the next meeting vould start today. Ve decided
   ve vould have a round table with six chairs. Ve had a disagreement
   on vether ve vould serve vodka or Californian vine, but ve
   compromised that everyone could bring his own bottle."
        "We made some pretty good progress for only three years of
   negotiations," a white said happily.
        "Listen, ve must do some serious talks. I move that ve
   eliminate all vite land-based missiles, and in return ve promise
   not to allow our dogs to urinate on the statue of Lincoln."
        "That's a good start, but we'll need more than just the dogs.
   We'll trade half of our land-based missiles for a third of yours,
   plus all your bombers. We'll even throw in a complete set of
   Jackson Five collection cards."
        "Vith a 40 by 60 poster of Michael?"
        "Even the poster."
        "Ve have to refuse your offer."
        "Why?"
        "Because that vould cut our arsenal by 40%, vile only cutting
   yours by 20%, ve don't like Michael since the Jackson Tour, and
   you're a donkey turd."
        "Jerk!"
        "Idiot!"
        "Fool!"
        "Nerd!"
        "Jackass!"
        Outside the conference, the press wanted to know what was
   going on. The officials answered that everyone was getting to know
   each other by first name.
        Ultimately the negotiators failed, and the cockroaches became
   uneasy. A settlement was imperative for the continued existence of
   life in the apartment, so the reds and whites made one final, last
   ditch desperate effort to save the apartment from total
   devastation. They arranged a summit for their two leaders.
        The leader of the bathroom came first to the site of the
   summit. His favorite saying was, "Well, let's see now," followed by
   several noises which could only be deciphered as gurgling. He took
   credit for everything from the economic recovery to the sunshine.
   The leader of the garbage came a bit later, complaining of the
   capitalist traffic jams. He blamed all the apartment's woes on the
   "capitalist pigs who vould monopolize the fresh air." They came
   together, and, only very reluctantly, briefly shook each other's
   hand. They then entered the meeting room with the negotiator who
   arranged the meeting. He had spent his entire adult life trying to
   find a compromise between the whites and the reds, and today was
   his last hope, where all of his life's work would come to an all or
   nothing result.
        After 256 hours they came from the building. The white leader
   smiled his big dopey smile. The red leader scowled, trying to
   portray the plight of the proletariat. They sat in a grandstand in
   front of a large half-white and half-red crowd. Everyone eyed each
   other suspiciously.
        The negotiator got up, and began to speak, "Ladies and
   gentlemen, today is a historic day. Today the nuclear threat has
   ended." The crowd cheered. "We've had significant arms reductions,
   with the eventual goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. Let me
   start with some of the specifics. The reds agreed to cut their
   arsenal to 1381 warheads, with the white's cut to 1382."
        The red leader got up and said, "Excuse me, but ve, the reds,
   agreed only to cut to 1383 varheads."
        The white leader stepped in, "Well, let's see now. Gurgle,
   gurgle, gurgle. Your warheads have a larger tonnage than ours, and
   it was my understanding that we were supposed to get one more
   warhead to offset this imbalance of tonnage."
        "The tonnage of our veapons is the same is yours."
        "Is not!"
        "Is too!"
        At this point in the infinite space time continuum, the
   negotiator decided that he no longer desired to remain a part of
   it, for his life's work was ruined.
        "I demand you apologize to me in front of the apartment for
   this blatant insult!" the white yelled.
        "Vill not!"
        "Will too!"
        The negotiator swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills with the
   cotton in one gulp.
        "Go home pinko!" the white shouted.
        "Eat dust pig!" the red replied.
        The negotiator slashed his wrists with a letter opener his
   wife gave him for Christmas last year.
        The white and the red, the leaders of the two greatest powers
   the apartment had ever seen, began to fist fight in front of live
   apartment-wide TV.
        The negotiator dived headfirst into the crowd.
        The aides of the two leaders bet with each other who would win
   the fight.
        The negotiator broke a sleeping pill bottle and swallowed the
   glass.
        A brawl developed in the crowd.
        The negotiator ran into the street and jumped in front of a
   car.
        The police came in and shot anything that moved with tear gas
   and rubber bullets.
        The negotiator grabbed a gun from one of the cops, and blew
   his own head off, splattering his brains over many unlucky
   onlookers.
        The two leaders embraced each other into a bear hug, fell
   down, and rolled away from the grandstand into a deserted alley
   outside. They broke away, and stared at each other.
        "I can destroy the apartment in six minutes," the white said.
        "I can do it in five."
        "You can never beat me in a destruction race."
        "Put your money vere your mouth is. I dare you."
        "Don't say that."
        "Chicken."
        The white knew what was coming next, but kept quiet, waiting
   for it.
        "I double dare you," the red said.
        The white took out a little radio and spoke into it, "It's
   Armageddon. Code anything but red. The Day of Judgment is at hand."
        The red then spoke into his radio, "The proletariat is rising.
   Fry the capitalist pigs."
        From the bathroom and the garbage little toothpicks flew. They
   crashed, causing small mushroom clouds to form. I ran towards the
   window, dodging the clouds.
        "The damage isn't wide-spread enough. I know a much better way
   to destroy the apartment." the white said.
        "So do I."
        They both ran to the stove and resumed fighting.
        "I want to destroy the apartment!"
        "No, I vill!"
        "No you won't!"
        They tried to cut through the gas line. It broke, and the
   smell of gas was in the air. The white took out a lighter, and
   attempted to flick it on. The red tried with some matches. As I
   dove for the window, someone behind me yelled, "Beat ya!" and a
   large explosion followed.
        The force of the blast made my dive pick up speed, catapulting
   me through the window. My arms and legs waving, I sailed over the
   veranda and the sun chairs, and landed in the middle of the
   swimming pool in a very ungraceful belly flop.
        The day after the apocalypse, I went back into the apartment.
   Needless to say, it was not a pretty sight. The cockroach survivors
   came from their shelters in a dazed state. The stench of rotting
   cockroach corpses filled the air. One cockroach looked at the
   devastation around him, shook his little head, and then made a
   speech.
        "Cockroaches of the apartment, see what our petty differences
   have caused? The civilization and technology that took our entire
   history to build is now gone. Our former governments have fallen,
   so it is time to unite together. Only together as one free people
   working to reach a common goal can we destroy the masochistic
   forces that dwell within us. If we don't come together now, when
   all our divisions have been toppled, we are forever doomed."
        He looked at the cockroaches around him; they just stared back
   blankly. He stepped down, thinking all was lost. The crowd then
   began to cheer. They picked him up on their shoulders, and carried
   him away. All the cockroaches travelled to the bedroom to start
   again. They built new cities, developed new technology, and cleaned
   up the apartment. Eventually, they built up their civilization
   until it was greater than ever before. It was here that things took
   a turn for the worse.
        The mood of the cockroaches changed; they hurried in
   everything they did. They ran around scared, and said things like,
   "He's coming, oh God help us." I'd help them if I knew what was
   going on. They organized armies on a technological level never seen
   before. Fear rose in the cockroaches; their willingness to fight
   rose even faster. They told stories about this he; they talked of
   his evil deeds in times before history. Suddenly the cockroaches
   pointed all their weapons towards the front door. A silence came
   over the apartment.
        He was near.
        Everyone waited in dread. Evil was in the air; it was so thick
   one could taste it. Realizing the air gun would not be an
   appropriate weapon, I pulled from a drawer my semi-automatic
   pistol. Anyone who wanted to mess with my cockroaches would have to
   mess with me first.
        There were footsteps outside.
        Everyone tensed and got ready to fight. I took cover behind an
   armchair, and pointed the pistol at the door. The cockroaches
   whispered in unison, "The anti-Christ is here." Fear ran up my
   spine, then my adrenalin rose as the footsteps came from directly
   behind the door. The footsteps paused, as if getting ready to
   strike. Everything climaxed as the fight was about to begin.
        Someone knocked at my door.
        I got up stunned. Since when does the anti-Christ knock at
   your door before he tries to zap you? The knocking came again, this
   time louder, more urgent. I walked in a daze to the door, opened
   it, and looked down into the eyes of a five-foot-one bald guy with
   yellow teeth.
        "Exterminator," he said. All the cockroaches moaned in unison
   behind me. I stared at him blankly, so he spoke again, "I'm here to
   spray your apartment."
        "I didn't ask for it."
        "It comes with the rent."
        "Well, I don't want it."
        "You're going to get it anyway, apartment rules." He glanced
   inside the apartment, saw the cockroaches pointing their
   sophisticated weaponry at him, then asked me to step outside. "How
   long have the cockroaches been acting strangely?"
        "About eight months."
        He scribbled something into a little red book. "What was the
   first weird event?"
        "A cockroach burst out of the sink yelling 'I think, therefore
   I am.'"
        "Did you happen to have six month old lasagna in there?"
        "Yes."
        "Have they blown up the apartment yet?"
        "About a month ago."
        "Hmm, their technology level is quite high, but a code two
   sweep should do it."
        "Do what?"
        "Exterminate them."
        "Oh."
        "Like our motto says, 'There Ain't No Cockroach We Can't
   Kill'" I looked at his bright red truck, and indeed those words of
   wisdom were imprinted on the side. "Tomorrow you'd better leave the
   apartment."
        "Wait a second, you've had cases like mine before?"
        "Yeah, but we always stopped them."
        "No on wants to study them, or learn from them?"
        "Learn from a cockroach? Don't make me laugh. They're pests
   and should be killed off. Exterminated. That's where I come in.
   You'd better not be here tomorrow; a code two will take you out as
   easily as it will a cockroach."
        "Don't threaten me!" I pointed my pistol at his face. He just
   laughed, showed me some government ID, and said, "Special Force
   Member, code name scratch."
        "What are you, CIA? Delta Force?"
        "Nothing so trivial. I'm part of the highest military branch
   in the Pentagon. The C-Force."
        "The Pentagon sent you? What the hell is a C-Force?"
        "The Cockroach Force. I'm heading the effort to get rid of the
   cockroach menace." I lifted my head in hearty laughter. "Hey kid,
   we're serious. These cockroaches have the ability to end life as we
   know it. They are a threat to national security, and were sent by
   the KGB to undermine the American Dream. I have orders to stop at
   nothing to finish my job." He then knocked the pistol out of my
   hand, pulled out of his red bag an M-16 assault rifle, and pointed
   it at me. "Don't mess with me. Until tomorrow." Scratch left.
        Everything became quiet the morning of the attack. I left the
   apartment after setting up a camera and VCR system to view and
   record the attack from my van. At 9AM a small red tank with the
   word 'C-Force' painted in large black letters on both sides drove
   into the parking lot. Scratch stuck his head out of the tank and
   laughed at me. Just as he moved his tank in front of my apartment
   door, I wondered where the press was. After all, a branch of the
   federal government breaking into private property to kill off a
   colony of cockroaches by way of a tank should be considered news. I
   thought of calling them myself, but scratch made his move.
        He aimed his cannon, and blew down the door of my apartment.
   He revved the engine up and down, then his treads spun wildly as he
   blundered into the apartment. My attention turned to the camera
   after he left my direct view. As he entered the living room, the
   cockroach helicopters attacked. Scratch fired a spray of poison gas
   from his cannon, knocking most of the copters down immediately. The
   surviving copters left their payload of cockroach marines on the
   tank. These cockroaches could not attack; no openings to the inside
   of the tank existed. They retreated so the fighters could attack.
        The fighters came in low and spread out to avoid the deadly
   fumes, but their air to ground toothpicks bounced harmlessly of the
   tank. The cockroach tank force and navy attacked together, but
   scratch destroyed them at will. The cockroaches dispersed,
   defeated. I could almost see the shit eating grin on scratch's face
   as he approached the bedroom, the heart of the cockroach society.
   He salivated so loudly that my microphone picked it up.
        A single plane flew in the air, and it fired a single
   toothpick at the tank. A bright light flashed, and a mushroom cloud
   grew. When the smoke cleared, a small hole became evident in the
   side of the tank. Now the battle began in earnest as scratch could
   no longer rely on his protective shield. The remainder of the
   tanks, planes and helicopters attacked in unison. Scratch yelped as
   toothpick after toothpick found its way into the hole.
        A platoon of cockroaches snuck up on scratch from the ground,
   and came within three feet of the tank before he noticed them.
   Scratch screeched a blood curdling scream of fear. The cockroaches
   seemed to move in slow motion as the cannon bore in on them.
   Scratch fired six times point blank, but a few cockroaches got in.
   Screams again came from the tank; this time ones of pain. From the
   remaining navy ships streams of PT boats full of cockroach marines
   went to help the cockroaches already in the tank.
        Scratch changed his strategy. He started moving the tank again
   by plowing through the hallway. He shot at the cities in the
   bedroom. The cockroaches inside the tank stopped trying to kill
   scratch, for he stopped screaming, and instead focused their
   energies on the engine and gun. The cannon stopped firing first.
   Scratch could only destroy the cities by running them over with his
   treads. He managed to crush three cities before he came to a stop.
   I again heard the screams of pain as the cockroaches turned their
   attention from the engine to scratch. Scratch scrambled from the
   tank, and ran screaming to the front door with hundreds of
   cockroaches on his back, and hundreds more in pursuit. Several
   thousand infantry cockroaches blocked the door, trying to prevent
   scratch's escape, but he dove for the window, broke it, and got
   out. Once there, six black late model sedans screeched in front of
   the apartment, and 20 C-Force men got out. A tug of war ensued
   between the C-Force men and the cockroaches to get scratch. The
   cockroaches suddenly let go, sending the C-Force men into the mud,
   ruining their red uniforms in the process. The C-Force people all
   got into the sedans and drove away heading in the direction of the
   hospital.
        The day after scratch's attack, I awoke to find the
   cockroaches gone from my home, which had become perfectly clean.
   The day before the apartment was a battle zone, but that morning it
   looked better than the day I moved in. I heard a commotion in the
   parking lot, so I grabbed my trusty air gun and went outside to
   investigate. A crowd of people surrounded my neighbor's Ferrari,
   which the cockroaches had converted into a flying machine with
   wings and rocket engines. The cockroach helicopters held the crowd
   back; the owner of the Ferrari lied on the ground with an
   assortment of toothpicks sticking from him. The helicopters then
   entered the Ferrari which blasted off into the sky. My neighbor got
   up, scowled at me, and walked away plucking at toothpicks,
   apparently unscathed.
        It was funny the way the cockroaches treated people, as if
   they were nothing. Excepting myself, of course, I was their god.
   But was I really? They could have killed me, but they didn't. Did
   they fear me? Did they trust me? Who was really superior? I
   suddenly knew how to find out. I still carried the air gun. All I
   had to do was look into it. The gun became heavy in my hand and I
   tried to throw it away, but some perverse force kept me from doing
   so. As if it was someone else, I watched myself open up the clip to
   look inside. All the pellets were gone, and a small piece of paper
   fell out. I picked it up, read the scribbling, and immediately felt
   sick. It said, "It's not nice to shoot at people smaller than you."
     
                            [NEWSPAPER CLIPPING]
        CIA CLAIMS TERRORISTS BOMBED EXTERMINATOR, BUT WITNESSES SAY
                             COCKROACHES DID IT
                                      
        WASHINGTON, DC. -- (AP) -- Yesterday morning at 5AM the 'There
   Ain't No Cockroach We Can't Kill' pest control center was in
   flames, apparently after a heavily armed group attacked it. The CIA
   claimed it was the target of either an Iraqi terrorist group, or an
   assassination squad sent out by Moamar Khadafi. However, when
   talking to witnesses, we get a different story.
        "A red Ferrari with wings came flying out of the sky," said
   one witness, "and from it at least 30 helicopters, each about a
   foot long, came out. They blew the door of the building down, and
   let thousands of cockroaches out into the building. I heard
   explosions and automatic gun fire. The cockroaches ran out, and
   soon after the building was levelled by an explosion. The
   cockroaches and the helicopters got back into the Ferrari, and flew
   away."
        The CIA denied the story, calling our witnesses a "crackpot"
   and a "deluded jackass."
        In a related story, an unidentified man sued the 'There Ain't
   No Cockroach We Can't Kill' company because he claimed he had some
   cockroaches they failed to kill. He made video tapes of their
   attempt, but the Pentagon stepped in and declared the tapes top
   secret. They settled out of court for 50 million dollars.
        These events further cause speculation that the Pentagon may
   have been involved in gene splicing, using a particularly potent
   technique which uses six month old lasagna as a catalyst. Sources
   claim that experiments went on with cockroaches to turn them into
   an army, for 400 billion cockroaches infest the US alone. They
   claim the experiments turned the cockroaches into fighting
   machines. It is further speculated that the Soviets infiltrated the
   operation, and released the cockroaches onto the American public.
   The cockroaches would be totally normal, except after eating six
   month old lasagna. They would then become extremely dangerous. The
   Pentagon, in association with the CIA, created the 'There Ain't No
   Cockroach We Can't Kill' company to eliminate the cockroaches using
   any method available. Some cockroaches escaped, and bombed the
   company headquarters in a retaliatory strike.
        The Pentagon called the story "absolutely false" and
   "malicious rumors." They claimed the ones "spreading these lies"
   are "anti-American communists out to destroy the American Dream."
   
-----
                                      
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
By Death Penguin
     
        And so I walked into the 7-11 to get myself something to drink
   and there are these two brawny-looking dudes with enormous
   hand-held cannons and ski masks bugging the cashier and making
   trouble. However, I was so stoned out of my mind that I didn't
   realize the danger of sticking around and purchasing a 7-up. So I
   walked up to the counter, slammed down my two dollars, and clearly
   stated, "change, goddammit." Then one of the big dudes turns to me,
   shoves his large projectile weapon up my left nostril and abruptly
   shouts, "WAIT YOUR TURN, ASSHOLE!!!!" Suddenly I felt the unique
   experience of my skull splintering into my brain and splattering
   all over the Pepsi cans behind me.
   
-----
                                      
A Choleric Experience
by Thomas S. Gilmour (HOOKLA)
     
        Ostrow felt the cold water run across his gnarled hand while
   he was cleaning out the small sherry glass. The kitchen represented
   the small microcosm of his personal universe, leaving traces of
   himself in every corner. He didn't get out much, as it was terribly
   difficult to organize the right event with the right mode of
   transportation on the right day with the right weather wearing the
   right clothes. His one hundred and nineteenth birthday was a week
   ago, which he celebrated alone in the dark fusty living room.
   Ostrow found that he hated large crowds, complaining of their
   diseases and coughing up viral phlegm. A cockroach scurried across
   the yellow kitchen tile.
        "Well hello Franklin!" Ostrow greeted the insect. The black
   eyes of the cockroach stared blankly at the small piece of cheese
   on the kitchen counter. "You want something to eat?" Ostrow
   continued. The cockroach responded by creeping closer to the food.
   "TOO BAD!" Ostrow said, as he destroyed the cockroach with his bare
   knuckles. Remains of the cockroach stuck to his hand and he wiped
   them off.
        Ostrow took a spatula and scraped the tiny corpse into a
   plastic sandwich bag. He opened the drawer underneath the counter
   marked FRANKLIN, and deposited the bag in amongst the other bagged
   corpses. Washing his hands, Ostrow began to hum.
        The living room was quiet, and the sweet sound of Mahler was
   just barely audible through the small speaker system which was set
   up in his china cabinet. Ostrow's favorite chair, a taupe lazy boy,
   greeted his behind as he merged into the tired springs and sagged
   cotton cushion. He relaxed completely, letting his head loll to the
   left. Ostrow let his eyes just barely close.
        A door slammed in the apartment next door. Ostrow's eyes
   flicked open. He knew that he had new neighbors, but didn't know
   how loud they were going to be. Deciding that a letter was in order
   about slamming doors, a smile spread across his lips. He hadn't
   written a nasty letter in many years.
        Music pierced the air like a shotgun blast, startling Ostrow.
   It was accompanied by a consistent thumping noise and a screechy
   voice. The neighbors had a stereo. Ostrow got out of his lazy boy
   and staggered to the door. He flung it open angrily, and stepped
   into the receding sunlight. The sky was flaming red disappearing
   into a purple night. The door to the neighbor's apartment was open,
   and a young tan student was leaning on the railing, sipping beer.
   There was a large cylindrical object sitting in a tub of ice. It
   was a beer keg. Voices emanated from inside the apartment.
        "What's up?" The polite young man asked.
        "I'll tell you what's up! The volume knob on that Goddamned
   music! That's what's up!" Ostrow shouted. Even though he was over a
   hundred years old, he could still bellow. "I'm gonna call the cops
   on you kids!"
        "Go for it," the towhead responded.
   
                       *     *     *     *     *                                    
   
        Ostrow was fuming. He didn't have a telephone, and the music
   was twice as loud, mixed in with the hum of party conversation.
   Banging a paperweight against the wall only succeeded in denting
   the plaster. His world was caving in on him, and Ostrow was on his
   knees writhing in anger. His eye caught a glimpse of the World War
   I bayonet hanging on the wall. Thinking about all possible
   solutions, he decided to ignore the most sane ones. Gripping the
   smooth steel of the war toy, he strapped the blade to his hand,
   knowing that it will make it more difficult for them to take it
   away from him. Blistering with an irate disposition, he imagined
   the brutal acts of violence which were about to occur. He could
   already see the young brat's guts seeping out of the mortal wound
   delivered to him by the fatal hand of destiny. Ostrow imagined
   throats cut, spewing forth blood and vomit.
        His eyes gleamed with anticipation.
        With a war-like cry, Ostrow flung the door to his apartment
   wide open. Standing in front of him was a police officer, who upon
   seeing Ostrow with a knife in his hand, reached for her weapon.
        "Drop it!" She bellowed. The knife, strapped to Ostrow's
   wrist, remained in place as he tried to set it free. Three shots
   rang out, and he was knocked back fifteen feet. Blood trickled from
   his frail, old body, and he coughed, then died.
   
-----

The Very First Solstice
by Swagman
     
        I woke up to the sound of my young son crying in bed. He had a
   nightmare of a muskrat chasing him and taking bitesize nips out of
   his heels as he ran. I got him up, out of bed and made a little
   nest for him on the couch next to my computer where I had logged on
   and began to write this.
        At one point he asked if he could turn lights off (it was
   04:45 and pitch dark outside). I asked him why he wanted the lights
   off so he explained that he wanted to "watch the sun rise." My son
   often gets up real early and apparently enjoys watching the way the
   light gets brighter in the house as night becomes day.
        I had been doing my writing thing on the computer for almost
   an hour, when looking up I noticed the clock and thought that time
   seemed to be hanging heavy on my living room wall -- but destiny
   and the pending dawn would soon take care of that.
        I remembered a spot down by the ocean, on Campus Point, where
   there is a wooden stairway descending from the clifftops to the
   sand in southeastern orientation -- a place of sanctuary where I
   once watched the dawn. I took a look at my son wrapped in a bundle
   on the couch, waiting to detect sunrise by the color changes on the
   walls of the room and I thought of the magnificence of the sunrise
   bursting over the mountains as viewed from the beach.
        "Hey Munchkin-Man! Go get your clothes on, we're going for a
   ride," I barked. It was 05:40 and my tidechart called for sunrise
   to be at 05:49. My boy had never before seen the real sunrise in
   its full radiant glory because we live in a little tract house in
   an area where the actual sun rise is obscured by buildings and
   trees, but today we would race the sun to the beach to greet it's
   arrival.
        We threw our clothes on, jumped into the car and went off
   recklessly careening through quiet neighborhoods at 60mph all in an
   attempt to be in the right spot in time to see the sun pop over the
   hill so my son could see sunrise for the first time in his life.
   Screaming down the last straightaway and into the dirt lot by the
   Marine Science Lab, breaking in a cloud of dust, father and son
   have beaten the sun to the beach, it's 05:48.
        It's an outgoing medium high tide with tiny wavelets smooshing
   against the sand in the oceanic percussion of infinity.
        Time has stopped, or at least is the same as it's always been.
        Hmmm...no sun at the ridge yet.
        We sit and wait. We talk awhile, his 7 year old eyes wide and
   wild, of the times before he was born when I used to come out alone
   to watch the sunrise.
        (05:50...05:52...05:55 Hey man, where's the goddam sun? The
   idiotic tide chart must be wrong)
        Neolithic pelicans glide low over the mirror plate of the sea
   only to suddenly dive into its surface, breaking the gloss with
   concentric ripples.
        Smooshhhhh! The waves with precambrian resonance, inject their
   sound into the background of my mind.
        Morning ochre colors dance on sandstone cliffs hidden behind
   dangling pampas grass ribbons. I _know_ this is better than living
   room walls.
        Smooshhhh!
        There is one boat anchored quietly in the cove we overlook. My
   boy talks of the time when we will have our boat and places he
   wants to visit.
        Smooshhh!
        (05:57...05:59...06:01)
        Smooshhh!
        "Papa! Where's the sun?" asks my boy. "It's hiding behind that
   mountain, buddy." Just then FLASH, razor bright, the first beam
   breaks over the hill in blaring, raging Devonian intensity.
        Smooshhh. (06:05)
        It's late but it's the same as it ever was...
        With that I got up and turned off the lights in my living room
   like my son had first asked. Then I walked over and curled up with
   him on the couch and waited for first-light to illuminate our
   livingroom walls.
   
-----
                                      
One Sunday Morning
by Wanderlust
     
        The music expanded and contracted in Herman's head like an
   artificial heart. Its plastic arteries and chambers cut into his
   forehead from the inside with every horrific beat. It wasn't the
   noise itself that truly tortured him. It was the moments of silence
   between beats; anticipation of the clamor that would grind into his
   brain.
        Ice ice baby...
        Herman laid on his stomach with his face buried in a pillow.
   Drool trickled from his mouth and saturated a good portion of the
   pillow, reacting strangely with the synthetic material and creating
   an annoying odor. Herman lifted his head, feeling the muscles in
   his neck strain and throb. He flipped over the pillow and dropped
   his head down, swearing at the pillow and the music. "Fucking
   shit," he moaned, and gave up on the diatribe.
        Ice ice baby...
        The stereo was at least ten feet away and the remote control
   even farther. Whoever drove Herman home from the party left his
   bedroom with the stereo on, set to KRAP, the county's number one
   rap music station. Herman swore to hunt down that person and kill
   him when the dizziness stopped. For now, though, he would be
   tortured in his own bed. Four hours passed and Herman still hadn't
   fallen asleep. His head was under the pillow now, being pulled down
   tight with sweaty fists. He was speaking into the pillow. It didn't
   matter what he was saying; he just liked the way his voice vibrated
   in his head. The music continued.
        Ice ice baby...
        A beam of dull sunlight permeated through the curtains and
   gashed Herman's elbow. He moved his arm quickly, as if the sun
   could burn him if given enough time. The light made Herman
   desperate for sleep now. He punched the pillow and took a deep
   breath. And another. It seemed like he was hyperventilating.
   Fatigue had driven him insane, he thought. He was perfectly sober
   now but his body would not fall asleep. Herman pushed the pillow
   aside and sat up. His temples pounded and his eyes rolled back in
   their sockets. He would sit there forever if the pain never
   stopped. He would die there if he had to. When the aching wasn't as
   intense, Herman pushed himself up and stumbled to the stereo. He
   wanted to do something dramatic, like shoot the speakers or the DJ.
   Since firearms were out of the question, he settled for kicking the
   Power button. Herman took a step back and then let his right foot
   loose on the stereo. Everything went silent after a crash. His ears
   buzzed. He looked down at the wreckage and found it pieces, with
   the tuner dial and volume knob separated from the unit. Herman was
   thoroughly satisfied with the damage and wobbled back to bed.
        Ice ice baby...
        The stereo wasn't playing and the room was silent, but the
   music still agonized Herman in his head. He tried all the tricks:
   humming the song, humming another song, even thinking about
   baseball, but the rap music continued to play. Herman screamed.
        The bed was soaked. The sheets, they stuck to Herman's legs
   and tore at his skin. He found himself shivering and opened his
   eyes to the midday sun, confused and weak. He tried to move his
   legs but they were wrapped tightly in the damp sheets. Herman
   looked down and nearly fainted when he saw the blood-drenched
   sheets covering him. His body and breath trembled as he rolled
   himself out of bed and onto the floor for examination. Herman's
   right leg was pale and withering from the lack of blood. His foot
   was completely unrecognizable; the blue skin on top was completely
   slashed open from his toes to his ankle. Blood sorrily tried to
   coagulate around the wound but the outward flow was too vigorous,
   pulsating more intensely after each heartbeat destroying any
   clotted barriers. Herman was exhausted and writhing on his bloody
   carpet. He laid back and tried to rest his spinning head and
   finally felt true exhaustion. He licked his lips and closed his
   eyes. He took a deep breath and fell asleep
   
-----
                                      
Monster Jennifer
or, Celibacy Can Kill You
by Voodoo Slide Rule
     
        Jennifer's sleep was disturbed by something inside her. At two
   in the morning she woke up and went into the kitchen of her
   apartment to get something to eat. She got chills staring at the
   swarm of silverfish on her kitchen floor. With the lights off
   Jennifer could see their shiny slender bodies glisten and slither
   in the dark. Her skin crawled. She flashed on the light to scare
   the insects away, and strike back at them for disrupting her sense
   of personal cleanliness.
        Jennifer's appetite was spoiled so she went into the bathroom.
   Her spice racks flanked the mirror above the sink. Most people keep
   their spices in the kitchen, but let's not make too many
   assumptions. Jennifer glanced at the labels and selected three
   jars. She drew a hot bath then threw some saffron, some nutmeg, and
   a tablespoon of oregano into the steaming water. There were some
   tools on the ceramic shelf just above the bathtub. After sitting
   down in the warm water, Jennifer began working on herself with one
   of the tools.
        She was such a sexy girl. Two different men in her apartment
   building had images of her in their minds at that very moment. One
   of the men was masturbating, his member slick and reaching, with a
   political talk show on his radio -- Rush Limbaugh -- and a baseball
   cap on his head.
        The second man was asleep, and Jennifer was part of his dream.
   They were both in a large empty dirt lot neighboring a cemetery.
   The one square mile area had been cleared of its trees to make room
   for more graves. Jennifer and the fellow were at opposite ends of
   the lot, driving towards each other on motorcycles at 45 miles an
   hour. It was a game, designed to test courage: they sped towards
   each other and the first person to turn off of the crash-course
   lost. At their combined speed it could not have taken more than one
   minute for them to reach each other, but in the dream they moved
   with the pace of an ancient clock's tick. Their motorcycles were
   silent. As Jennifer came within twenty feet of the man he saw that
   she wasn't wearing a helmet; her hair was like a stray raincloud
   that had wandered down from the overcast sky; it would never
   protect her head. When they were fifteen feet from each other they
   made eye contact, their expressions challenging each other to
   continue riding for another split second. When they were within ten
   feet from each other they both turned simultaneously; suddenly he
   could hear their motorcycles, and the sound was deafening. They had
   not planned the game well; instead of both turning either to the
   right or left, he turned to his right and she turned to her left.
   They crashed into each other. Their motorcycles exploded into
   fragments, and his right side was paralyzed. He saw Jennifer's eyes
   roll away from the ruins of her bike, and he saw one of her lungs
   lying on the ground like a fish stolen from its world, still
   inhaling and exhaling. The man's face was immotile lying on its
   side in the dirt, but moving his eyes around he looked for
   Jennifer's head. He couldn't find it.
        The dream changed. Now only the masturbator was thinking about
   Jennifer. He removed his baseball cap -- it was getting too hot --
   and switched off the radio so that he could concentrate better.
   When he ejaculated, Jennifer wasn't even thinking of him. He was
   spent, his mind buzzed in vacuous contentment. Now no one was
   thinking about Jennifer.
        Jennifer became sleepy in the tub, and relaxed. Then like a
   pin pressed into her mind, she began worrying about her financial
   situation; she got fired over two weeks ago and would soon be
   broke. If only you could send in some money for her. But no, she
   would have to call her mother. Jennifer became angry. She thought
   of the silverfish. To calm herself she began imagining a new tool.
   Maybe she could get a stranger to test it so that she wouldn't have
   to take the risk again.
        Floating in the corner of the tub was a bay leaf left over
   from her last bath. Jennifer was usually careful to drain her
   baths, as everyone should be, but she considered it a good auspice
   to find some remains from the previous bath in the tub with her;
   baths were miniature other-worlds, connected to each other by a
   language of left-over objects. When she noticed the bay leaf
   Jennifer thought to herself, That's there to tell me I'm the
   richest girl on earth. Matter of fact there was something
   wonderfully unique about her anatomy. Lots of people would want to
   marry her for it.
        Sleep became irresistible. Jennifer stood up in the tub, her
   smooth skin glistening with a fine pale film. The ends of her hair
   were curly and dark with moisture, while the hair closer to her
   scalp was still dry and straight. A thousand drops of water fell
   off her body as she stepped over the edge of the tub onto the bath
   mat. She did not slip and break her neck. But she did decide not to
   bother draining the bath, and to go directly to sleep instead. She
   knew this was foolish.
        Jennifer fell asleep and dreamed that one of the silverfish
   crawled into bed and seduced her. The tiny movements of its
   snaking, segmented abdomen mesmerized her.
        "You always have salad and coffee," Jennifer told one of her
   friends at the City Cafe, where she ate lunch. "Black coffee and
   Thousand Island dressing. I don't like the sound of that
   combination." The other woman, whose name was Samantha, stared at
   her. "You people from New York sure have strange habits," Jennifer
   concluded.
        After staring for several moments more, Samantha said, "My
   husband is dying of AIDS."
        Jennifer felt uncomfortable in the taxi on the way home. The
   driver never stopped staring at her through the rearview mirror.
   She held out a five dollar bill to him when the ride was over. He
   didn't reach for the money, he just gazed at her. "Look, Miss, I'm
   only going to ask you this once. I don't usually proposition my
   customers, but if I asked you to do something with me, say, like--"
        "No!" She dropped the bill on the front seat and stepped out
   of the cab, then ascended the stairs of her apartment building. At
   her apartment door, Jennifer realized she left her keys in the
   taxi. She got an extra door key from the apartment manager, but
   when she called the cab company -- and she called four times that
   evening to make sure -- they reported that no keys had been turned
   in. The driver had apparently decided to keep the keys.
        Jennifer's sleep was torn open from the inside. She awoke up
   at about two in the morning and went into the kitchen of her
   apartment. Even though she expected to find silverfish on the floor
   the sight of their wisping tails and antennae still made her
   shudder. She switched on the light, but this time it did not faze
   all the insects; some continued scrounging around the kitchen.
   Would poison spray work? Roach motels?
        Jennifer decided to ask the apartment manager to call an
   exterminator the next day -- in addition to hiring someone to
   change her lock. Jennifer went into the bathroom, and found the
   water from the night before still in the tub. It was completely
   still. It looked more like a solid mass of milky quartz than water.
   This water was petrified, and a line of extinct movement rested on
   the surface of it in the form of a thin layer of soap. The tools on
   the ceramic shelf stared into the water with Jennifer, and while
   she looked embarrassed and a little guilty -- she had given in to
   her laziness the night before -- the tools looked aggressive.
   Threatening. They wanted to plunge into the water and strip it of
   its hydrogen, reducing it to pure air. At one edge of the tub
   Jennifer saw the bay leaf, which looked more like a dark stain by
   now than a leaf.
        "My husband is dying of AIDS, and you're complaining about my
   salad dressing. Jennifer, you are the most stupid, careless person
   I know. Your amazing body will ever make up for that."
        When Jennifer was really young she fell off her kiddy stool
   one night during dinner. When she hit the linoleum floor she felt
   like everything hated her -- the kiddy stool, the floor, her
   throbbing shoulder -- the whole world. And then her father yelled
   at her for being so clumsy. Several years later her father shoved
   her across the kitchen. He was angry at her for something, she
   never remembered what. Jennifer fell and her forehead banged
   against the handle of the cabinet under the sink. Her skin was torn
   open, and she needed eight stitches. The scar would be visible for
   the rest of her life.
        As if to make up for the tragedy and the blemish it would
   leave on her, her body began developing in a delightfully
   unpredictable way. Even the weirdos who work at condom factories
   never imagined this. When Jennifer was in the eighth grade -- her
   parents had divorced and she was living with her mother -- a letter
   from the school arrived for her Mom. It reported that Jennifer
   would not be allowed into high school next year because her grades
   were so miserable. Jennifer felt like a complete failure. She was
   one, scholastically. But for the life of her she couldn't figure
   out why.
        The fact that she genuinely tried to get good grades made
   Jennifer's disappointment in herself acute. Her Mom said, "Why
   don't you try sleeping with your teachers?"
        Jennifer asked, "Couldn't you do it for me, Mommy?"
        "He has AIDS? Oh my God, Samantha, I'm sorry. I had no idea. I
   feel so callous. I would never have thought he was sleeping with
   someone besides you. And a man? No wonder you feel terrible; that
   shows you weren't satisfying him. I'll bet you feel really guilty,
   because it's your fault he has AIDS; he wouldn't have wanted to
   sleep around if you'd been good enough. If I were you, I'd feel
   like shit. And to top it all off, you're probably going to get AIDS
   now."
        The second man began dreaming about Jennifer again. This time
   she was sitting in a garden, on the edge of a large marble
   fountain. Shiny white lotus blossoms were on the water behind her,
   bubbling in the light reflecting on them. Jennifer's hair looked
   radiant. Her dark brown eyes were turned away from him as he looked
   at her, and waited for her to say something. He stared at every
   point on her body like she was diagrammed on graph paper. Her
   fingernails weren't painted. Her stomach was empty. She looked up
   at him, and there was a ladybug crawling on her lower lip. She
   didn't notice this; he ground his teeth in frustration.
        Apprehensive about the bath water, Jennifer shut the bathroom
   door. She took a sleeping bag out of her bedroom closet, and slept
   inside that. With the zipper almost completely closed, she didn't
   dream of anything.
        "Jennifer, look, it's your fault you left the keys in the cab.
   I'll call the locksmith for you, but you have to pay for it. It's
   your fault."
        "Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about the bugs? The silverfishes?
   You can't say that they're my fault."
        "No? I'm not so sure. No one else in the building has
   complained about any. Are you sure they're there? Have you seen
   them yourself?"
        "Yes! I see them every goddamn night." "Are you sure? You're
   not just imagining them or anything, are you? You're not
   hysterical?"
        "Get serious."
        "No one else has complained about them! Not even your next
   door neighbor."
        "Oh, for chrissake, that guy probably isn't hygienic enough
   for insects. And he wouldn't notice them unless they crawled out of
   his TV screen; all he does all day is watch sports and listen to
   Rush Limbaugh."
        Matter of fact there were other things he did as well. He hung
   out at the YMCA and local gyms, periodically approaching beginning
   weight lifters and swimmers to offer helpful tips, or crumbs of
   humor. He went to beaches and infiltrated volleyball games. In the
   middle of an otherwise normal game the members of a team would
   collectively realize that a total stranger just served for them;
   they'd whisper to each other, "Who is this guy?" "I don't know!"
   "Well, who did he come with?" And no one would know. But they'd let
   him keep playing because of his strong serves and his good
   cooperation on the team. He'd invariably leave before having to
   answer any direct and revealing questions.
        Occasionally at the YMCA he'd approach a stranger in a locker
   room, asking to borrow an extra pair of shorts or socks, or
   offering some of his own. And once in a while when he was alone in
   the locker room with a young boy or an adolescent, he'd walk over
   and occupy the neighboring locker. At some point he'd reach over
   and put his hand on his neighbor's body, then offer to exchange
   sexual favors with him. More often than not the other person would
   accept. Even if he was customarily straight, or had never had sex
   before. But when he wasn't engaged in any of these activities, the
   guy was at home watching sports or listening to Rush Limbaugh.
        An agency sent over an exterminator. He walked around
   Jennifer's apartment with a red hose that had a metal tank at one
   end and a shiny silver nozzle at the other. The tank hung over his
   muscular shoulder on black cloth straps. He sprayed around the
   edges of the carpets, in all the corners, under dressers, under the
   sink, and behind the toilet.
        "Oh, excuse me, mister? Could you unplug the drain in the
   bathtub?" The Exterminator looked up at Jennifer, then down at the
   bathtub filled with murky dead water. "I'd really appreciate it.
   You have to reach in and take the plug out of the drain. Please..."
        He reached out, then hesitated; he saw a pair of large aquatic
   snails gliding slowly along the bottom of the tub. He looked up at
   the strange woman. She was anxious, shifting, but he felt something
   special about her. He shrugged, then plunged his hand into the
   liquid. The drain had looked closer than it was; his whole arm got
   wet, right up to the shoulder. When the last of the water, silty
   and dark, had swirled down the drain, the snails were gone.
        "Thanks so much! I really appreciate you doing that for me."
        The Exterminator smiled.
        "Mom! I met a man I really like."
        "Have you met any men you don't like?"
        "Gee, that's really funny, Mom. Seriously though, he's a
   really fine person."
        "Congratulations, there are only three of them in existence.
   Actually I'm happy for you. I hate men right now. Did I tell you
   I'm becoming a Lesbian?"
        "You're kidding."
        "No, I'm finally going to do it. I haven't found the necessary
   literature yet, but I hope to soon. So tell me about Prince
   Charming."
        "He's extremely handsome -- I'd even say statuesque; he has an
   amazing smile; and he's an exterminator."
        There usually seemed something very gender-based about the
   components of Jennifer's reality, but on her first date with the
   Exterminator she found her male and female distinctions melting.
   When the Exterminator removed Jennifer's clothes, he found one of
   her tools working on her body. She had forgotten it was there.
        "Oh. It's new. I designed it myself. What do you think?"
   Jennifer tried to ask only yes-or-no questions with the
   Exterminator, since he was a mute, but in this case she slipped.
   The man didn't scrawl a note on his pad of paper; he didn't know
   what to write; he thought the tool looked like a cross between a
   lobster and a totem pole, and it smelled like salt water taffy. He
   just stared.
        "Want to see me turn it on?" She quipped, "It could turn you
   on."
        He half shrugged. Eager to excite him, Jennifer turned the new
   tool on full blast -- which she promised herself she would get
   someone else to do first, since she wasn't sure it was safe. But
   she courageously merged the untested tool -- straining in its own
   parameters -- with her Feature, which the Exterminator had longed
   to see since they first met. It was an amazing thing. Suddenly
   Jennifer had to close her eyes, and she exhaled sharply. The
   Exterminator's mouth fell open. For a second he was hypnotized,
   then he ran out of the apartment.
        "Wait!" she called out, but he was already gone. Jennifer tore
   the tool away from everything and hurled it against the wall. She
   cried. A few minutes later, she heard a key click in the front
   door. She remembered the taxi driver; the lock had not been changed
   yet. As she reached for the telephone, Jennifer heard footsteps in
   the living room. She also heard the drain in the bathtub start to
   vomit.
        The first time Jennifer met Samantha was at the City Cafe. It
   was lunch hour, and the place was so crowded Jennifer had to sit at
   a half-occupied table. The woman already sitting there, Samantha,
   was eating a salad which had things that looked like glass marbles
   all over it. After the two ate in silence for a few minutes,
   Samantha spoke to Jennifer. "Um, excuse me. Do you mind if I ask
   how you got that scar on your forehead?"
        "Well, I'm sorry, but it's something I don't really like to
   talk about."
        "Sort of like the Eighties?"
        "Only not quite as trivial." And then Jennifer noticed that
   Samantha, too, had a scar on her forehead.
        When the Exterminator was a boy he was constantly sent to day
   care centers. One of the centers was a commercial farm where the
   kids were used illegally for child labor, which the center managers
   had a different name for. The kids had to clean out stables, feed
   and wash the animals, and so on. These tasks lasted for the whole
   day. The Exterminator was once out in a grazing field surrounded by
   two dozen sheep. It was sunny and the air was clear. The night
   before he had been up crying well into the night because his
   parents were fighting, but now -- out in the field, away from
   everyone -- the boy felt safe and overwhelmingly happy. He got down
   on all fours, and pretended to be a sheep. He rubbed against the
   animals and bleated, then even tried eating grass. He didn't like
   the center's managers. He took every opportunity to go out with the
   sheep and pretend to be an animal like them.
        After leaving Jennifer's apartment, the Exterminator drove up
   the coast, looking at cows grazing in their fields.
        Jennifer was standing naked and gripping her telephone when
   the taxi driver appeared at her bedroom door. She was astonished.
   "I'm sorry. I didn't want to do this. Look, I'm sorry you're naked.
   These are for you." He handed her a dozen red roses and something
   bleeding in white butcher's paper. "It's a heart."
        "Thank you."
        "You're amazing."
        "Thanks."
        "And hermaphroditic: you have both male and female genitals."
        "I know."
        "Amazing."
        Jennifer spent the following Monday in job interviews. When
   she came home in the afternoon, she found a message from her father
   on the answering machine. His voice was apprehensive and tired. She
   had not spoken to him in twelve years. She borrowed a friend's car
   and drove to the place where he asked her to meet him. It was the
   lake where some parts of the city got their water, and where
   fishermen went to fish. She walked down from the area with the bait
   shop and the snack shop to the docks, where dozens of low
   horsepower boats were tied up. Almost all the boats had returned
   from out on the lake; it was late afternoon and soon it would be
   too dark to fish.
        Jennifer saw her father's boat emerge from behind a distant
   peninsula. It took four minutes for the boat to reach the dock --
   she noticed her teeth were clenched -- and Jennifer wasn't
   completely sure it was him until he uttered her name. She was
   surprised by how old he looked; he had never aged in her
   imagination. "I didn't catch shit out there."
        "Being a father isn't the only thing you're bad at?"
        This surprised him. "No, I guess not." They looked at each
   other for a long time. He put down the heavy tackle box that he was
   holding. He was standing between Jennifer and the lake, and
   directly behind him she could see a school of bass in the water.
   They were large; the largest among them weighed eight pounds, but
   they were like ghost fish; their movement was impossible to follow
   under the rippling waves that reflected the sunset; their silvery,
   curving outlines contained shadows, and they appeared, then
   vanished, reappeared again as if in quantum leaps.
        "Why did you ask me to come here?"
        Staring at her feet, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve then
   looked up at her. "I wanted to say that I did what I had to do. I
   mean refusing to see you those times, and everything."
        "That's all over with. Mom and I have forgotten you. You don't
   have any right to try to change anything." He looked away, then
   nodded. "All right. Then I guess don't tell her I saw you, right?"
   "Yeah." After a moment he shrugged. She turned to leave.
        He was thirty feet across the gym wearing a black tank top.
   His shoulder and arms, his strong neck, the visible portion of his
   densely haired chest, were all glazed with a light sweat. They made
   eye contact through a jungle of Mr. Universe weight lifting
   contraptions serviceable to every muscle in the body. Almost. He
   followed him into the locker room. It was ten thirty in the
   morning. Rush Limbaugh was over, and there were no other people in
   the gym. In the locker room there were ten vacant shower stalls,
   five long, low benches, and two guys wearing tank tops. They faced
   each other. The Rush fan put the palm of his hand against the other
   guy's breast. The other guy closed his eyes; one of his hands, by
   an instinct for closeness, moved to the Rush fan's waist. The Rush
   fan slid his hand slowly and purposefully down the other guy's
   chest over his tight, flat stomach muscles; then down further to
   his soft and hardening genitals. The other guy opened his eyes, and
   they kissed.
        "So what's your name? What do you do?" The Rush fan asked when
   they were done. He was lying down on a bench with the other guy
   sitting up beside him, his hand resting on the Rush fan's lap.
        "Paul. And I don't want to tell what I do." Paul smiled.
        "Why not?"
        "Cuz it's stupid."
        The Rush fan sat up. "What do you mean?" "It's not me. What we
   did just now, that's me."
        "Everything you do is you."
        "Christ, I hope not," Paul said. "I have a wife who loves me.
   Do you love me? Yes, Samantha, I love you. Then every lunch hour
   while she's off at the City Cafe with her catty friends I'm at Bob
   or Paul or Stan's house tearing up condoms like they're made of
   smoke. If everything I do is me, then I'm eighty percent lies."
        When the Rush fan left, Paul stayed in the locker room.
   Sitting on the bench alone and still naked, he removed a monkey
   wrench from his gym bag and began licking it. He pressed it to his
   fillings, and tasted its metal deeply. Paul couldn't bring himself
   to warn the Rush fan that he had AIDS. It wasn't selfish avoidance
   on his part: he simply could not put the words together.
        "So what's happening with your Exterminator, Sugar?"
        "Oh, that ended. It was just a fling."
        "Really? You sounded so enthused."
        "We all make mistakes. But I've found someone else! He drives
   a cab part time, but he's also a brilliant electrician. He's
   helping me with my, you know, electronics projects."
        Jennifer's mother paused. "Well, I just hope you see your
   gynecologist regularly."
        "Oh, Mother! You know I don't need a gynecologist for that. I
   need a surrealist."
        "Jenn, it's not smart to be as sexual as you are. Sex is
   dangerous these days."
        "Mom: Celibacy can kill you just as easily as any disease."
        "As if you'd ever find out, right?"
        Jennifer did not mention that she met with her father. That
   night when she went into thekitchen, she did not see a single
   silverfish.
   
-----

Sungone
by Colin Campbell
     
        Look, it wasn't my fault. Not really. It was just another
   demonstration at a nuclear power plant, and we hadn't been getting
   enough network coverage. The crowd was big, but polite. The
   National Guard ringed the plant and we were hundreds of feet from
   the gate. We were as close as we were going to get.
        I gave the nod to the dancers, and to the cameramen. Today's
   demonstration was going out live, I hoped, and if not live maybe we
   could get tape on the network news. We had a satellite relay to New
   York ready just in case, uplinked through a synchronous satellite.
        The old Indian stepped forward with his bag of grisly shaman's
   tools and something about him and his Indian mates caught the
   crowd's attention. The six other Indians, in elaborate costume,
   began a slow and complex dance. Each one passed the old man; he
   pulled a mummified owl from the bag and handed it to the first
   dancer, a pickled human fetus to the second, and so on. I was glad
   I didn't have to explain the fetishes to the national audience. The
   old man looked noble and strong despite his obvious age. The girls
   told me he claimed to be 119 years old.
        The dance stopped with the six dancers in an array around him.
   "The world is as we agree to see it," he said. "We must channel
   human belief into the old ways, the ways of nature."
   
        A brisk Santa Ana wind electrified the air and when the old
   man paused the silence was tremendous, a baking silence, yet when
   he spoke the air was translucent to his voice, and those a thousand
   yards away heard easily. Those watching on TV heard, too.
        "The danger is atoms changing into poison. The radiation rots
   strong metal, it destroys all. It is wrong to change atoms, evil.
   The ways of nature do not need atomic change."
        I turned to Leslie. "Where does this guy come from with the
   atomic talk? I thought he'd been living in the hills a hundred
   years?"
        "The minds of all men are the source of the universe," the old
   man said. "A hundred years ago there were no unstable atoms. We did
   not seek instability; therefore there was none. If we the people
   agree to it, if we decide we don't want it, we can refute the
   authorities, we can stop the power companies, and end the terror
   and destruction of atomic power."
        The old Indian rambled on, and the crowd's contact high became
   contagious. Dizzying forces seemed to be gathering.
        My phone beeped--it was Jenkins, the guy from the Anti-Nuke
   Committee who'd hired me. "Great work, Sam! We're gaining ratings
   on cable fast, and CNN wants to go to live coverage! Tell your crew
   to be on their toes." He disconnected.
        Even the National Guardsmen at the gate were becoming
   enthralled. There was a sense of immersion in a stupendous event.
   "Come on, he's just an old fart with a bag of bones," I said. The
   girls ignored me.
   
        Last night in New York I'd gotten a phone call from Jenkins:
   "Sam, I just talked to CNN and they say they're pulling out, they
   can't afford to sit around unless you can promise some action."
        "Mr. Jenkins, I told you I could bring out a big crowd. You're
   the one with the program to sell them. You want them to storm the
   gate, is that it?"
        "No of course not. We're here for a peaceful demonstration.
   Look, Sam, we're paying you a lot of money to make sure we get a
   lot of coverage for this thing--not just to bring us a crowd. I
   want you to get out to that site and stir things up. Find a new
   angle for CNN to cover--I already promised them."
        "But I--"
        "Just do it," said Jenkins, and hung up. So I flew west with a
   couple of the girls, Lesly and Sandra. They did all the work. Even
   before our private jet got out of LaGuardia they were searching the
   datanets for me, finding things out. All I do is take the
   credit--and the flak.
        We were over Colorado when they told me about an old Indian
   man who lived on Point Conception, some kind of local witch doctor
   who claimed to have successfully hexed the liquid natural gas plant
   that the power company wanted to build there thirty years ago. The
   proof was, the old man claimed, that to this day the plant has
   never been built. He was willing to hex the nuclear power plant, or
   so the girl's infonet said.
        I told the pilot to head for Santa Barbara, where President
   Reagan lived before he died. The demonstration was up the coast a
   hundred miles but I preferred to stay at the Biltmore.
        It was just dusk when we landed and we had to make something
   happen before noon tomorrow. I sent Leslie and Sandra scooting up
   the coast in a rented Toyota van to see if we could get the guy to
   do his schtick at the demonstration. "If all else fails, offer him
   a couple of grand," I told them.
        You wouldn't think it would be so hard to drum up coverage,
   because the media today are so antinuke. But there are lots of
   demonstrations. You just look at the news and there are dozens of
   hot spots. Three weeks ago, Surry Unit 1 blew out. Gravel Neck,
   Virginia, was now a ghost town, with twelve people dead and
   hundreds more in critical condition with severe radiation exposure.
   Last week, the Turkey Point reactor in Florida City vented huge
   amounts of radioactive steam and two workers died stopping the
   leak; the countryside was evacuated, and even though there were no
   reports of radiation exposure, it scared the poop out of the
   nation.
        I didn't care one way or another: that wasn't my job. Two
   years ago when the Vermont Yankee station conked out, I recruited
   hot jumpers for the power company. You didn't hear much about it
   because there was no spill, just internal damage, and we were able
   to hush it up pretty well. Luckily it happened the same day the
   Space Shuttle crashed and we slipped by under the more important
   story.
        The pipes inside Vermont Yankee were rotted with radiation and
   had burst and needed to be replaced. The power company had robots
   to weld the pipes together, but pipes had to be fetched, welding
   supplies on the robots had to be replaced.
        So we needed hot jumpers.It was unskilled labor and the law
   limited a person to 4 hours of exposure per six months. It paid
   good, and I set up a little office and delivered a steady stream of
   guys from New York, and kept it quiet. Sometimes you want to keep
   the media out.
        I offered guys $1000 cash plus room and board for the week
   they'd be there. Takes two days to train them, then they dash
   inside for timed forays until their four hours is used up, which is
   usually before the week is out.
        Some of the guys came back to see me even though their six
   months wasn't up yet, but they needed the money pretty bad and I
   helped them slip through again and again.
        It's a living.
        I really wasn't paying much attention to the Indian's speech.
   Now that Jenkins had told me about the network coverage I wanted to
   direct the cameras myself. Sandra was supposed to be the director,
   but she was standing transfixed. I took the control panel out of
   her hands and she didn't notice.
        The control panel was a slab of silicon the size of a kitchen
   cutting board. Right now it was divided into five small TV screens,
   one for each camera. The cameramen were listening to the speech,
   too, and the feed was coming strictly from one camera showing a
   medium shot of the Indian. I instructed camera 5 to pan the crowd
   and cut to that with the Indian as an inset. My earphone jangled
   instantly and New York instructed me to stick to the medium shot
   and quit fucking around. Yessir.

        I wiped the TV screens off the control panel and asked for
   real-time ratings analysis. It was amazing: at that moment we were
   number one in the world, more than three hundred and seventy
   million TV sets were linked to us, something not even the Solar
   Bowl had ever achieved. And networks were still joining. There must
   have been a hell of a lot of word of mouth. The analysis showed me
   that the broadcast was being computer-translated and fed to thirty
   five countries in twelve languages--and those numbers kept
   increasing as I watched. It was building into the biggest broadcast
   in history.
        I still couldn't see what the big deal was, but I was glad to
   be in on it. The old man gabbled for another fifteen or twenty
   minutes and it sounded lik e the usual muddled hodgepodge, plus
   mysticism. He didn't lose a listener. Then he asked everyone to
   rise, both here and at home before their TV sets, and, as he
   combined in a bowl the various ingredients the dancers handed back
   to him, asked the audience to chant with him:
        "End radiation--let atoms be stable!"
        The chant repeated six times, growing louder each time, and
   with the sixth repetition the old man pulled a rabbit from under
   his costume and plunged a knife through the rabbit. Blood sprayed
   over the bowl. The tremendous sound of the crowd snapped into
   silence for a long moment, longer and longer, and then a shocked
   muttering arose.
        The old man was done. He and the other Indians methodically
   gathered their costumes--some parts had been tossed aside during
   the dance.
        I used the control panel to say to the on-site announcer,
   "Okay, Perry, give us a quick summary while I have Rod gather a
   couple of people to interview."
        Perry started to babble something but the crowd roar was
   rising and I couldn't see why. The old man had finished gathering
   his materials and was staring toward the powerplant, shading his
   eyes with his hand. I looked at the powerplant: the National Guard
   was in retreat, streaming into the gate, falling back from the
   fence toward the building, consolidating its force. There seemed to
   be frantic activity inside the plant.
        Then I understood the crowd's mutter: the power plant had shut
   down. The old man's hex had worked.
        ABC had a reporter inside with the plant director, and I
   watched on the control panel as New York tried a live interview
   with him. The director was whitefaced and answered no questions.
        Then New York interrupted with a special bulletin: all atomic
   power plants around the world had ceased to function. In fact, all
   radioactive materials had ceased radiating. There no longer was any
   such thing as atomic power. New York went on blathering about the
   effect on the arms race but I thumbed the controls. "Rod! Get close
   to that Indian and interview him, let's get this story."
        The demonstration site was pandemonium, with cheer after cheer
   rippling through the crowd, but Rod got to him fast. Another bonus
   for that boy. Not that money's any good anymore.
        The Indian seemed stunned himself; he was silent for long
   moments, after Rod said: "Your speech was broadcast to an
   unprecedented live audience of six hundred million people.
        "Not only this power plant but apparently every nuclear device
   in the world has ceased to operate. Was this your plan? How did it
   happen?"
        The old man looked at the crowd, at the cameras. "The world is
   as the mind sees it. Today you tell me six hundred million watched
   this ceremony. Their minds joined through my focus to bring
   stability, to re-define the way of the world. And it is good."
        He wouldn't talk any more, and the six other Indians became
   bodyguards escorting him away. Rod started the audience-reaction
   interviews, but then the interview cameraman said in my earplug,
   "Dammit, I'm losing light, wait a minute."
        I looked up, expecting a cloud. Instead, I saw that the sun
   was dimming, turning red. I found out later that it happened
   exactly 16 minutes after the old man plunged the knife into the
   rabbit. It takes eight minutes for light to get to Earth from the
   sun. The effect of the Indian's hex must have reached the sun in
   eight minutes itself--at the speed of light.
        You know the rest. The sun grew steadily dimmer. It was winter
   throughout the world within four months, and has remained winter
   for the last thirty years. The sun is a sullen red lump in a dark
   sky, you can look at it easily without harm at high noon. The sun's
   atoms of hydrogen are stable, now, and cannot fuse into helium.
   There is no atomic power for stars, either.
        There are still some two million people of the privileged
   classes; we survive in our burrows, our non-atomic burrows. We
   shall survive a while more.
   
        We managed to interview the old Indian just before the mobs
   got him, and he was unrepentant. "Yes, I knew the stars ran on
   atoms. But the day of the red man was done. The white man robbed
   and disgraced us. There are few Indians left; it is better to die
   in this final battle. And win."
        The nearby stars have started to wink out as the effect of the
   hex spreads at the speed of light; we have murdered the universe.

-----

BLOOD POEMS
by Death Penguin


  The pale touch of heat with resonance
                                      
     The pale touch of heat with resonance
     with Eyes that cannot be seen
     Deaf to the voice of
     me.
     Wait.
     Lost in a query
     She is a magician
     Dressed in the past
     All arrayed.
     A jeweled moon
     Sea
     Drawing from me
     that pale touch of heat with resonance
     Anger unannounced brought by the light
     a solemn sigh of pretentious awakening
     Intensity, that of
       fine tuning
       hightened perception
     The world served up to me under glass.
     And that simple gift she gives to me
     unaware
     Remote complexities of a sanctuary
     and that familiar pale touch
     of heat
     with resonance.


  The Ghost and the Girl          
                                      
     Alone
     in his eye
     She sings.
     Spoken ripples of earth
     cascade from her breath
     and fall
     Potent magic, sacred rain
     siezing his hand
     Drawing blood from his fingers
     capsize his world
     withdrawing him
     into the pyramid of dying sky.
     The ghost and the girl.
     She sings
     unwillingly
     and he dies in her arms;
     Choked by her beauty,
     fleeting images snared behind his eyes
     unreachable touch lodged in his throat
     suffocated by rapture
     entombed in desire,
     His spirit rises into the heavens
         of her sweet song.


  Silhouette          
                                      
     Silhouette, radiance
     She descends from
     a prism of beauty
     down
     to touch me
     with airs of twilight
     Cool bells of fantasy
         that tumble from her lips
         I bathe in the fluid of her voice
         Drink Drown Die
     Suicide, most beautiful
     I can not
     touch her
     She is gone.
     Silhouette, retreating
     ascending into the divine
     Flourescent flame of absorption
     Burning me until I am spent
     and she does not return.
     The sunlight she brings is gone, left
         with her
     Overwhelmed by the night,
     I return home.


  electric woman          
                                      
     electric woman
     Do you exist?
     Pulsations of
     your image
     shrouded by your
     hesitations
     Vivid painting of a white withered angel
         giving to a sea of fragrance
     Beautiful Angel,
         finite
     it is you that is the stroker of hearts
     the devoid
     you are my fingertips
     It is you    Dancer,
     it is you
     Include me in your song
     lead me past the silence into the
         melee of your whispers
     it is You.
     electric
     inviting
     It has always been you.


  Lonely
                                      
     Lonely.
     Like a breath.
     Or wind
     Or the invisible air
     The tide; yes
     Solitary
     Inviolate
     do not leave me
     Stay, rest
     Be
     I am here    see me
     Know that I see you
     Do not be alone
     When we can Be.


  The Hunt           
                                      
     The hunt
     Poised
     A destined inclination
     withering mesh
         brought into an array
     bound by
     Ecstasy.
     With a tumultuous rising
     venturing into the light
     and then into a warm
     darkness
     Bonded only
         by motion
         friction bound
             by virtue
         Virtue
     Restrained only until the touch of a sigh
     And then surrendered.


  Would that a man be less of the stars, than light          
                                      
     Would that a man be less of the stars, than light
     For mine eyes are not blind to the beauty
         of darkness.
     Darkness, sickly sweet
         With skin like the sea
         and Eyes like yellow wine; would that I dance
     of your touch
     Blank stare into internal skies
     Skies of hope and prosperity,
     that they should clash in a glitter of despair
     And to be lost? With smoke and dreams,
     so do I vanish.


  Her Light
                                      
     The night, and the sweet tender warm inviting darkness
     The familiar brilliance of the darkness
     evaporates
     as she comes
     Solemn surrender
     Violent release of solitude
     gasping for solace
     her secret
     Buried within a chest of glassy youth
     Touched not by my desires
     And alive.
     Beautiful as the shower of light she designs.
     The world explodes at her touch and falls away beneath me.
     Black sections of reality
     erupt backwards
     and I am devoured by light
     Light
     Searing
     Beautiful.


  Phantoms of the eye
                                      
     Phantoms of the eye
     Rain.
     Solstice -
     running from wind
         leads only to wind
     And she cries
     Night.
     Whispers of moonlight water
     hushed by the cries
     Enveloping slowly the browned carcass
     The crimson bone
     Silence.
     She drifts into the twilight.
     
     Mystery
     That of divine sound
     would that she see
         the notes rise
         from my lips
     And form into the
     words that
         cut deep and say
     Goodbye.


  Fizm's Wawk
                                      
     Gurm, says I like a pirate;
     Into the wind my voice trails
         and only the birds hear
         If they understand, they show no signs
     
     I look out at the sea    the waves
     fight, press, like wawk from the fizm's belly
     that I did thought I see
     But 'twas but not but was it?
     Gurm galore, says I like a scholar;
         and only the birds saw it
         If they recognized, they keep silent
     
     Long have I been captured above the earth
     resting on the tears of the wawk
     Too Long, says I like a Cleary
     
     The gulls and the gurm
     know each other
     They fly over the fizm and see him
         He presses on like the waves
         The birds know if he is there
     
     Where    if anywhere    wawk, gurm, fizm child
                                   (by name called)
     Show me thy scales
     Make it be true
     Be, says I.
     And they birds fly on.


  An August Memory
                                      
     Convertible drive
     "A car with taste"
       I smile...
     Feet hanging out the window
     blur, free and also
     no fear.
     Laughter    the radio
     The smell of new leather.
     
     flowers
     in the sun
     fleeting?    no
     feel
     breathe
     A man with a child
     laughing,    though
     the child is free    a whistle
     harmony.
     
     Summer sadness
     A dreary air
     stale puzzle
     The girl invisible
     Forming a gauntlet within life's errors
     Sustaining blue, atrocities survive
     And drown
     me.


  Boy of glass
                                      
     Boy of glass
     in the subway station
     The chair I sit in is empty.


  Lost
                                      
     Soon to be found
         never lost
     She waits.
     I wonder; her name?...
     If I ask her, she
         will not stay
     I wait.
     She is leaving;
     I wait.
     
     Soon to be lost
         never found
     
     Lost
     Where did it go wrong?
             Reason twisted    gone away
     The night lies to me
     those beuatiful lies
     If these lies are truth,
     let me live in a world of lies;
     Or then let my world be ignorance would it be that
         these lies should corrupt me
     And to my mind give life.


  Running
                                      
     Running
     W