The Mimosa Effect 2

6.22.10

the slow morning climbs sleepily
out of the low clouds
and the mist hanging
weightless above
the dark waters

waves chuckle
against the rocks
gossiping
about the sea

–

tumble of mossy rocks
through dappled shade

tall sun-clad spires
of pink and purple foxglove
dappled too,
like prized fairground ponies

faery houses made
of twigs and bark
lovingly arranged
by the slender fingers
of three giggling girls

comfortable stone paths
nestled in soft springy loam
inviting dalliances
with green shadows

–

6.23.10

by the water’s edge
crabs amble through
swaying seaweed forests
over barnacle stippled rocks
purple starfish
crammed into craggy cracks
hiding from the mid-day sun
live starfish are not brittle
but full and taut
like a bunched muscle
still-damp arms glistening
they do not stir at my touch

shells here,
just under the water at low tide,
are not empty, but full
of little bodies, with startled
grasping legs
that scuttle away and down
into depths I cannot reach

later, looking up
through oak branches
at the pale blue sky
the sun peeking out
from behind the leaves’
scalloped edges
small insects float,
white and gold against the blue
like flecks of dandelion pollen
everywhere the air
is full of bird song
and the distant whine and chug
of outboard motors

–

shells in the forest

at first you don’t realize
what they are
chalky white smudges
on the cave floor
bending down you see
a thick layer of oyster shells
most ground to fine dust by now
some still whole
this is where the women
and children hid
while the men fought
before roads, or pathways

slumbering behemoths
left by ancient glaciers
the stones at the foot
of the land-whale cliff
lean against each other
as if they fell asleep
while wrestling
beneath them, a cool hollow
you could hide a dozen here,
maybe twenty
huddled together
cracking open the shells
and eating the soft,
slick innards raw

there is a path here now
people build mountain bike ramps
foolish, ridiculous things
straddling the boulders
wood tied together
like part of some old prospecting town

no longer hidden
but still mysterious
even knowing
shells on the forest floor

- T.H.

More here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QByHat2BJLs&feature=related

The good news is, I finally finished the big climax scene of the John Dresden story (and there was much rejoicing).  The downside is, I have more editing to look forward to.  And, since this time the final-pass editing slog will result in a novel (hopefully) ready to be sent out into the world (…trying not to think about that part overly much…), all of my frivolous little side projects, N&D included, will have to get shuffled to the back burner. 

To sum up – Nyx and Dozer will be on hiatus for a bit, as I juggle novel editing, landscaping/house stuff, prepping for my extended trip out west, and the usual madness of wedding & concert season getting into full swing.  Things look to be quieting down some time after the end of July, so the plan is to wrap up the Nyx & Dozer story in either August or September. 

In the meantime, the odd video or silly link might make the occasional random appearance, but the writerly part of the blog is officially on summer vacation.  (Heck, it was warm enough for July earlier this afternoon, so why not?)

Cheers all.  Until later.

Best idea I’ve heard all day. Although I have to say that Serenity was more than just a little bit better than Biodome.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1935273

When the ringing blindness cleared a little, I could hear shouting – muffled, like someone had wrapped my head in a pillow – and there was a distinct sensation of movement.  Took a few more fuzzy seconds for me to realize that I was being dragged.  Someone had their hands under my armpits, and was lugging me like a body needing disposal.  I finally found my voice to protest when we hit the stairs.

“Then get off your ass and move yourself.”  It was the girl – Nyx – sounding even more annoyed than usual.  “Or so help me, I will let you roll to the bottom.”

After a bit of awkward gymnastics – my sense of balance had apparently decided to take the rest of the day off – I managed to get to my feet, using the closest wall for support.   My vision was still mostly a blur.

“Where are we?”

“Back stairwell.  Come on, no time for loitering.”

I followed the dim, bobbing blob that I assumed must be Nyx down the stairs, leaning against the railing to keep myself upright. 

“What was that back there?”

“Flash grenade.”

I gathered from the ensuing grunts and curses, and the eventual screech of rusty hinges, that the door at the bottom of the stairs was not cooperating.   A dozen words danced in my throat, but never quite made it out – “You’re shitting me,” was on the top of the list.   Thing is, I hadn’t know her that long – maybe an hour or two, tops – but I got the impression that she didn’t kid.  Or exaggerate.  So.  Flash grenade.

“I take it Trev’s paranoia wasn’t completely unfounded, then.  Who the hell would want to hurt him, though?  He’s harmless.”

“Not him.  As for who tossed it, I didn’t wait around to ask.  But I have some ideas.  You wouldn’t happen to know how to hotwire one of these, would you?”

One of…   “What..?  No.”  No, I was pretty sure I didn’t know how to hotwire, period.  My vision had returned enough to tell that the blocky shapes around us were cars – must be the underground parking lot. 

“Damn,” Nyx said.  “Need to find an older model.  Before everything got all covered up and computerized.”

Since that made no sense to me, I tried another topic.  “Speaking of Trevor…”

“No idea.  He wasn’t anywhere to be seen when I showed up.  Ah…” This time her voice gained a note of satisfaction.  “There you are.  And you are a thing of beauty, aren’t you?”

I knew she wasn’t talking to me, and my clearing vision could see that the garage seemed unoccupied, aside from us.

“You talk to cars a lot?”

“Shut it.”  Nyx pulled something thin and wiry out of her pocket, and unfolded it like a telescoping fishing pole.  In a matter of seconds, she had the door open, and the panel off the car’s steering column.  Then she was contorting herself on the driver’s seat, doing something I couldn’t see – presumably something to do with wires.  There was a cough and a sputter, followed by the begrudging, phlegmy rumble of an engine starting.  It didn’t sound all that healthy, as engines go, but I had to admit she was right.  It was a thing of beauty.

“1969 Dodge Charger,”I said, impressed.  Not that I know thing one about cars.  But I had spent many a childhood afternoon cross-legged on the carpet in front of the TV, following the adventures of the Duke brothers with far more rapt attention than they deserved. 

“You getting in or what?”

Tempted as I was to try leaping into the passenger seat via the window, I had recovered enough to realize that first, my coordination was still of questionable reliability, and second, that the window was firmly shut.  I settled for yanking open the door and settling into the cracked leather seat.

“So is this the part where the car chase starts?”

Nyx grimaced.  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.  Still – you might want to put your seatbelt on.”

I did my best to follow her advice, as she floored it, first back, then a sharp arch forward, out of the parking spot and onto the exit ramp.

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I won’t bore you with the details of my other encounters (presuming someone finds this and reads it some day, and I’m not around to explain things – which is seeming far more likely now than it did a week ago).  Suffice to say that I left a trail of quietly snoozing bodies in my wake.  Not exactly playing it sneaky, I know, but I had this almost overwhelming feeling that I was running out of time.

I’ve never had so many unsavoury propositions in my life, as I did in those four blocks between the bridge and the dilapidated apartment complex that Dozer’s crazy friend called home.

As anticipated meetings go, this one blew away all the competition – quite literally.  Well, almost.  If I had been blown up five hours ago, I’d hardly be writing this now.   Don’t really know why I’m bothering, to tell the truth.  There are far more important things I should be doing.  Guess I’m not ready to face that yet.  It’s like, it’s too big to get my head around all at once.  Needed to take a moment, unwind, let off steam.  Needed to… I dunno, get away from the problem that is currently sitting in the other room. 

I thought he posed a quandary before.  Now I really have no idea what to do about him.  See, I thought it was all about getting the case back.  Finding out if this thing that I’ve been looking for since I was seven really exists.  But now that I know it might actually be real, it’s like…  I don’t want to know.  Because to tell the truth, I’ve known all along it was just a fantasy.   Like those people who are always on the verge of finishing their novel, their magnum opus, but never quite seem to get there.  They keep writing, and re-writing, and the pages pile up, but it never really goes anywhere.  Because it’s not about finishing it.  It’s about having something that’s yours alone, something into which you can escape when stuff gets bad.  And that’s not something people are willing to give up easily.  Least of all me, apparently.

Gotta go.  I think Dozer’s managed to mostly work himself free.  And I’m not ready to let him go just yet.

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She waited until I stopped laughing, watched as I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

“I’m going to do you the courtesy,” she said, “of giving you fair warning.  I don’t like being laughed at.  Or lied to.”

“Sorry,” I said.  “Kind of an in-joke.   Seriously though – you want me to be straight with you, how about we make it a mutual exchange?  You already know my name.”

The first thing she’d said to me, after kicking the door open (or, for all I knew, blowing it open with some kind of mutant energy blast), was, “You must be Dozer.”

I’d responded the way you might expect, with more than a few words that would get bleeped on prime-time.  She’d ignored me, pushing the door closed behind her (or as near to closed as it could get, given its newly warped hinges), and tossing a black knapsack on the bed.  Which, given the size of the room, wasn’t as far from the door as you might expect.  It was kind of like a scaled-down version of  a cheap hotel room, minus the TV.  The knapsack landed in a heavy, dent-making kind of way that suggested it was heavier than it looked. 

Now we were both standing next to that bed, facing each other like boxers in a ring.  Despite the fact that I had at least three or four inches on her, I had no doubt that if it came down to a boxing match, she would most assuredly kick my ass out of the ring and down the street.

She narrowed her eyes, like she was trying to see the secret writing scribed on the inside of my skull.

“I’m Nyx,” she said.

“Goddess of sleep and dreams,” I said.  “Makes sense.  So, do you, like, really have super powers, or…”

“The case,” she said, without a trace of humour.  “From the safe. Where is it?”

“Why should I tell you?  For all I know, you’re one of the bad guys.”

“Is that really how you see the world? Good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains?  What are you, five?”

“Eighteen,” I said.  “Next month.”  No one ever seemed to believe me, when I said that.

“Too bad,” she said. 

“Why’s that?”

“Because if we get caught, we could both end up being tried as adults.”

I took a step back.  “Tried? For what?  Stealing some stupid box from an abandoned warehouse?  Christ, lady, you can have it back, if it’s that important.”

She shook her head.  “Not that.  well, yes, that too – eventually.  What I mean is…” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, like she needed to steel herself for what she was going to say next.

“I need your help.”

I almost laughed again, then remembered what she’d said.  I swallowed it down, and managed a strangled, “You need what, now?”

“You heard me.  There’s something going on around here, and judging by the company you keep…”, jerking her head at Trevor’s snoring, peaceful form, “..I’m guessing you know something about it.”

If only she realized, how very little I really knew, about pretty much everything. 

“Hero number one,” she prompted.  “Ring a bell?”

It was hard to tell, with someone like Nyx, whether it was safer to pretend to know something, or not.  But before I had a chance to lie – or tell something like the truth – the front window shattered, and something black and oblong was rolling through the room.

“Down!” Nyx shouted, and we both sank to the floor, arms over our heads, just as the room exploded in a bright, blank nothingness.

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The whistles and choice words started up as soon as they spotted me. It’s hard to stay out of sight in a wasteland, where anything taller than a stop sign has been reduced to dust and rubble. They call that area between Redford St. and the Bridge “The Dump”, because that’s where everyone tosses their garbage – up to and including burned-out cars, shopping carts, and occasionally, bodies. The river shore stops being a winding stretch of manicured parks and beaches, and devolves into a steep, treacherous slope of gravel and industrial fill.

I don’t normally like doing my thing where other people can see me. Last thing I need is to end up on the front page of some tabloid, or become the next freak-show special on Fox news. Unfortunately, this time I didn’t have much choice.

There were five of them, all swimming in pants three sizes too big, bedecked with garlands of gold jewellery. Two of them had the requisite immaculate loose-fitting sports shirts, open to the navel. One was rocking the shirtless look, complete with shaved chest and oiled biceps, despite the fact that it felt like it might snow at any moment. The other two were bundled into the kind of puffy, shiny jackets only ever worn by 20-something chavs, and 60-plus grandmothers. They all had their heads shaved, all the better to see their impressive assortment of head and neck tattoos.

I think they were hoping that I would turn around and run. They looked like the types to enjoy a good chase before a kill. I gritted my teeth and kept walking, keeping my head up, eyes fixed ahead, as if I hadn’t even noticed them. Thing is, I have to be within a certain distance for my super-special pheromones to work their charm. About as far as a thug with arms like tree trunks can throw a bottle. They all had bottles of various sizes swinging from their hands, not even bothering with the usual half-hearted paper bag disguise.

Close enough meant I could smell their cologne, like a spike-heeled kick to the sinuses. Close enough meant that they could easily have pulled out any kind of weapon they liked, and thrown or shot them at me, to potentially deadly effect. I pushed the fear down, as far down as it would go. Adrenaline sours the poison, lessens its effect.

I don’t need the hand gestures, but some twisted little kid part of me does it anyway, because it’s, well, more fun. Like I could imagine I really have some kind of magical power.

These guys would remember me, whether I, or they, liked it or not. The little girl who turned into a witch before their eyes, black hair blowing in the breeze, the girl who, with a wave of her hands, put them all to sleep.

It’s always tempting, once they’re down, to keep going – take something from them, do something to them. I got by that way for a while, back when things were really bad – stealing cash, credit cards, cell phones, food. Each time, it felt like a part of me was getting dirtier, somewhere deep inside where I couldn’t reach to make it clean, to make it better. So I stopped. Not the stealing part, per se, at least not completely. But I made a rule for myself, that I would never do it to anyone who was helpless to stop me.

I left them with their wallets, and their Rolex watches, and their assortment of blades and brass knuckles. I did, however, take their guns. I know that throwing several handfuls of 9 mm’s into the river probably counts as littering, but I figured the folks upstairs might look the other way in this case.

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It wasn’t Trevor.  Although he did come crashing in a few minutes later, brandishing a taser like a sub-machine gun, shouting “Hands in the air!”  He might have temporarily been able to fool someone with that one, if his voice hadn’t cracked at the end.

The girl didn’t even turn around.  She just rolled her eyes, as if to say, not another one, then made this odd little flicking motion with her fingers.  Trev’s face got this funny, slightly puzzled look on it, and then he was crumpling to the floor.

“What the hell did you do that for?”  I said, before my brain caught up with me and I realized that she hadn’t actually done anything.

Then I remembered what had happened to Reeve, back at the warehouse.  One minute we’re goofing off, playing at being sneak thieves, thinking we’re alone, and then he falls over sideways, unconscious.   I thought at first that he’d fainted, but he hadn’t.  Just fallen asleep, suddenly, for no particular reason.  The kind of thing that usually happens to me.

I ran over to Trevor, to make sure he was okay.  He was curled up on the old brown indoor-outdoor carpet, snoring gently, the taser cradled against his chest like a teddy bear.

“Sorry,” the girl said.  “Force of habit.”

I turned back, looking at her more closely this time.  My first impression had been, well, confusing, to say the least.  She hadn’t looked like much through the door’s peephole – just some chick, looking down, so I couldn’t properly see her face.  I’d figured maybe it was one of Trev’s less than scrupulous neighbours.  Then I was landing on my ass, thrown back as the door slammed open, and she was standing over me.  I hadn’t unlocked the door.  And I had to figure, by the size and build of her, that she hadn’t just used brute strength to kick it off its hinges. 

But all of that kind of fell by the wayside when that part of me that isn’t my brain kicked in.  Whatever angry, scared knee-jerk thing I’d been about to say never made it out.  Reeve would’ve laughed his ass off, to see me struck speechless.  Literally, in this case. 

She still didn’t look even remotely familiar.   But there was something about her that was bugging me, and it wasn’t just the fact that she was simultaneously incredibly hot, and easily as scary as that Terminator chick from the third movie.

Then I got it.  It was the smell, faint and sweet, like a hint of perfume. 

“It was you,” I said.  “At the warehouse.”  We hadn’t been alone after all.  And deep down, I’d know that – I’d just put it off to my usual over-active sense of paranoia.

The girl grinned, flashing all her teeth like a predator.  “And you,” she said, “are the one who broke into my safe.  Care to tell me what it was you found?  And what you did with it?”

“If it’s your safe,” I countered, “shouldn’t you know what was in it?”

She shrugged.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.”

“Hold on,” I said.  “How come you didn’t pull that Sandman trick on me?”

She grimaced.  “I tried.  You seem to be the only person in this damned city that it doesn’t work on.”

I couldn’t help it.  I started laughing, like it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.  And once I got going, it was hard to stop.  She just stared at me, probably wondering if I shared Trevor’s tenuous grasp on reality.  And I gotta say, at that point, I was starting to wonder the same thing.

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