Cool Tanglefoot

This once happened. The Oneironaut came and stayed. I tried to regain the old path. Traversed in a Northwesterly and Southeasterly direction by mountains rugged and rocky, the wild, bold scenery is unsurpassed in beauty, grandeur and stupendous sublimity. It represents the vitality, spirit and enjoyment of nature.

He was a professional, not a murderer. I want to swear all the time. I’m becoming a grumpy old man. She is skinny as death, but she thinks she weighs too much so she punishes herself by eating very little. The birds were still; wading in the water, their long necks poised in rapt attention.

There was water everywhere: a thousand streams interrupted by makeshift waterfalls, small ponds hidden beneath a mask of thick fronds and anonymous blossoms; blankets of dew draped over the shoulders of isolated knolls. This is what the werewolf told me about, at the fire. The water keeps flowing, and it falls over the edge. Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes it gets a bit awkward.

“How old are you?”

I cried out a little in surprise and pain, and my cries sounded like tiny prayers. For those who relish speculation regarding the future, rushing river waters will simply fall over the edge. What I would give for some rain. “Stop,” I said or thought I said. It did not matter. I slept alone in one bedroom while my parents shared the second. We just got started, but she got into the vodka and got all strange. The water flows from higher land, then it falls down a big step of rock to lower land of softer rock …
At 3AM, the young detective watched a huge shadow walk up the five steps and begin jimmying the lock. But that’s all a part of the fun!

“What’s your name?” she asked.

Clearing smoke and the dawn will be here soon. This is what democracy looks like.

“I don’t remember,” I said. I would never remember.

The bird’s long white neck became the most important thing in the world. The smell is of spruce trees which surround the waterfall and stream and of the soggy, wet air. The sound of flowing water is all that can be heard. Waterfalls are known for their beauty and awesome power.

“You’re going to feel some pressure here,” said Dr. Clancy.

“What’s the difference between a white heron and an egret?”

Unlimited information might be given upon the projectile’s nature and inclination, and yet he resolved to crush the proposal by weight of his arguments. We can use the information gained from these travels to increase cosmos knowledge and benefit humanity. He is not sure of how much time he has to decide.

In another of those stories, I was the maker of songs. Green bushes cover the hill where large rocks are not exposing themselves. The scene indicates the unblemished purity of nature when not ravaged by human habitation.

This computer is not supposed to be alive, and yet it is the best I have.

Elizabeth Browning dies from illness, the best work extant upon this place and period. He says she calls him and hangs up, every day at 9 am and noon. I hope she’ll find the work interesting.

For years I have been waiting for twilight. Now I am not sure the hurry is worth it, as the deliverance is final. Let’s go around in the mail trucks again, it’s early. I gather that the home situation was difficult. The plan was to stay on the lookout for the paranoid neighbors in your community, who think you guys are all terrorists.

My voice pushed against the walls.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked. “What is wrong with you?”

The walls did not move.

“Rescue me,” she said.

I lifted my head and shouted my name.

Abundant are the supplies of medicinal blossoms, herbs and roots, from the purple veined cancer plant which needs to be looked for, to the full panicle of the sumac which is used as an ingredient in pharmaceutical preparations, as well as for the purpose of dyeing, while wholesome berries of various kinds abound on all the hillsides and in the lovely valleys. Something will happen. Here is hoping for it to being good!

In the middle of a city, in the middle of a strong wind, a thousand paper birds rattled and sang. So long as it was an unique and extremely valuable book, this was out of the question. He was big enough and mean enough but why did he do it?

Upon awakening I’ll laugh out loud at the sheer NUT-BALL INSANITY of it all, and not have a clue about what it’s about, but again that’s the fun of the stuff, containing pure MADDNESS!!! It is an area to connect with your inner soul and to raise your spirits. Life with her might be very complicated. But then, it’s always that way.

It’s about a mile walk, through some interesting territory. The glass darkened with smoke.

“It’s real,” I said.

The glass melted in the fire.

“I know,” I said. “He covered me.”

The matter hung fire for some years, everyone trembling for the book’s safety. The glass exploded in the heat.

Those were the days of the old stories, “We’ve come to take you away from here. We need you.”

Its fame spread, as the danger in using it deepened. Then the next day back to the day after day routine. What the heck happened? It was veneer clear.

“They were escaping, sir!”

“Keep your eyes closed,” she said.

“Ha, no, not going there.”

I am reading a book about the civil war, specifically about the four bloody days at Gettysburg. Her father had not only lived in the county almost a half century when the book was written, but he had a wide acquaintanceship throughout it. I loved our house. I cried whenever I left it. I never wanted to leave it. I’m obsessing, you know, in the piscean age (the one the occult folks say we’re moving out of), in the Old World, there is all this deep-dark-arcane stuff. The blood-letting, the sacrificial offering, shaggy prophets talking to “god”, meetings in the woods with drunken “fools” spouting deep “truths” mixed with enigmatic nonsense.

He retired from his job at the warehouse, no more overtime for him, now he is trying to figure out what the heck to do every day. Everyone has problems. He has been getting notes from her over the years, she goes out to stare romantically at him every Tuesday and Friday when he makes the rounds. That very night a telegram was sent from the station, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned, young and old, “when swift they go o’er the fleecy snow,” whilst somewhere far down among the muffles of robes and fur, bright visions of the fairy dance, and more weighty consideration of a luxurious supper, make light their merry hearts.

Wilkie James dies from Civil War wounds, and so they’ll gladly lie and lie and lie, right to their faces.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked as I stood in my seat.

It’s time to set up a routine and build. You will need to find ways to retrain your animal intelligence and how to function outside of the tame conditions it got used to, the dutiful daughter’s decision was probably not too hard to make.

It was so cold that we started shuddering. No big deal, I’ve done this before as a sleep and dream inducer. She set her cup on the table and took me into her arms. It gave us goosebumps immediately.

Now it’s dark here. Dogs barking, the kids have stopped crying and the adults have stopped screaming obscenities. Evening comes to my neighborhood. He looked at himself in the mirror and straightened his tie, also he worked on devices to test the veracity of spirit forces in order to celebrate themselves. They sparkled uneasily in the dying light and shimmered like the ghostly, blood drops of a phantom. August is the slow news month and the slow preamble month, I guess.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked.

In that domestic day she probably had some daughterly duties about the house, as well. From the moment he first saw her on the stairs at the end of that long dark hall lit with one bare bulb he thought she looked like a painting. There appeared to be a cave under the arch of the waterfall.

“I can’t see,” I said.

Word came over the radio that there was possible trouble, then it got really dark really fast, then the thunder and wind, and the humidity was that kind that makes your stomach queasy, suddenly the rain broke and the radio said that the storm was just southeast of here, moving north east. Missed us. The plane landed in a float, in the water near an anonymous desert. Other planes landed in the flat, anonymous desert. The clouds of smoke were shaped like horses. I torture myself watching these shows. She died, a long respected figure in her community, and three younger sisters drowned in the Nile River. The bones seemed to grin up at our hesitation as we turned to go out. It was chiming as it slid, svelte and slinky, past my feet.

The difference between an egret and a heron? They’re the same damn bird, there’s no difference.

Prayer is painful.

But I fall asleep anyway and start having the most bizarrely involving dreams, it seems at one point within the dream I win some sort of “Weirdest Dream of the Year” award that entitles me to a free trip to our sister planet (you know the one we share caretakers with).

“Hush, hush,” said my mother.

Should be fun.

“We’re going to die,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” said my mother. “Don’t ever say that.”

The noise subsided as I walked away.

Walter drifts into insanity, Annie commits suicide, Fred pursues her beyond the grave for the rest of his life, its soul-swelling magic followed me all the way home.

You’ve got it facing the wrong way, we were warned about this person twice, and yet, somehow that occurred.

Best horror sentences: monsters, mist, deserts, dark forests and thunder and lightning. Sure, if you are me, you just have to turn around and watch…

It is a very good infomercial. I would buy some Slapchops from these guys. In this way it’s easy to see how this stuff might have inspired the Early Christians and Gnostics. — “I am in this world not of it.” And hast thou slain the Jaberwock?

We had a quick tornado scare last month. I am in the attic here, there is a storm cellar but it’s locked up tight, all of the utility access is there I would guess. The flight was long and uneventful. There were several trials to fly in old history, the idea was brought to mind after the invention of navigational “spirits,” while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise. They say that it’s the “cost of doing business” and you want to be cautious. He also says that the announcement itself is on the defensive.

They are monsters.

Still miss the place. I have missed it when I’ve been away, and I’ve been away a lot.

“Don’t hurt me,” I said.

I knew my silence disquieted them, and I well remembered the words of my father: “I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as proof that your other duties are equally neglected.”

So that’s useful. I can say that if that is true, it sounds like our adversaries have an enviable amount of options, under the circumstances!

My god! when will it end… not yet.

“He may be doing things overseas that we’ll find to be problematic or dangerous, we’ll find those facts out over time,” he says.

We moved as one unit, as if we were migrating birds. Everyone should just wander around in a generalized state of panic for the foreseeable future, okay?

It didn’t work. “Why is all this happening now?” he thought.

In the Clemens brother’s ghost story, Sam and Henry, who died in boating accident, well, Sam dreamed of a ghost visit and funeral flowers, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade other than what an artist finds, occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Anything in excess is never beneficial. And we’re trying to declassify as much as we can. People have already done it, “got the heck out of there.”

At least once a day, I strapped myself into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. I wanted to give it a name, so I called it Father.

“It’s real,” I said and wept. “I know it’s real.”

Oh, how adorably naive and wonderful you are. They had, for a while, kind of a rural life, nice yard, no close neighbors. “I am stuck inside, help to let me out!” You show the world that you found a way out. The impossible, the most unlikely of crimes. Now he actually had to face the man who caught him doing it. The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

“Sorry about that,” he said as he started to back up and correct his mistake. Her manners had all the elegance which her husband wanted. It was loud enough to take him out of his thoughts but not loud enough to investigate.

I still give this advice:

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, “This problem is not going to go away.”

Okay, well, I trust them, then. The beast that knows no mercy.

“Why are we here?” shouted the spectre who stands in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest.

I feel a sense of pride thinking, “I’ve done that,” he thought as he stepped off the little church’s last wooden step and began the long hot walk to the street car. They were merely doing what they had to, a fundamental way to understand the duality of mind and external reality.

In the fall, while visiting Notre Dame, I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the great room; “he can tell. Oh, save me! Save me!” I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit. They’re worth a look back, within, and below. I like to take them alone at night, in the dark on the couch, headphones on and off, music ambient, relaxing, trance inducing. Scenes from the movies; he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my disturbed imagination, but the pertinacity with which I continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event.

This is actually probably true — you should, in practical terms, think of bed for several days. The picture was then produced which the servant had found in her pocket. He left it dead, and with its head he went galumphing back.

“A hunter?” said Ardan.

“A hunter? Yes,” replied the bushman.

“Long ago?”

“About an hour.”

“Too late!” cried Maston.

“Have you heard any gunshots?” asked Ardan.

“No!”

“Not one?”

“Not one! That hunter did not look as if he knew how to hunt!”

“What is to be done?” said Maston.

“We must go into the woods, at the risk of getting a ball which is not intended for us.”

A few moments later the two friends had disappeared in the copse. It was a dense thicket, in which rose huge cypresses, sycamores, tulip-trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and magnolias. These different trees had interwoven their branches into an inextricable maze, through which the eye could not penetrate.

This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep. I think that getting from the “metaphor” explanation to the “literal” explanation might help put everyone on comfortable equal footing. It’s going to happen if you stay focused and not give up.

“So I suspected. Hitherto chance has never thrown you in my way.”

“I am here for that purpose.”

“You have insulted me.”

“Publicly!”

“And you will answer to me for this insult?”

“At this very moment.”

“No! I desire that all that passes between us shall be secret. There is a wood situated three miles from Tampa, the woods of Skersnaw. Do you know it?” I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch, and they reached out to me about making a mini documentary about me and my work with Amulets. To the truly imaginative he is an expert on the calling talisman and possesses a key unlocking rich storehouses of dream and fragmentary memory; so that we may think of him not only as a poet, but as one who makes each reader a poet as well.

“And burbled as it came!”

Both of them laughed.

“Son,” he said. “What is your name?”

“I’m Rob,” as he extended his hand.

The oversight is just so tremendous. As I floated in that seemingly endless sea of air, I became aware of the variety and complexity of the humanity below. Do not laugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the cause of all this?

“They all go out and do the same thing or try to do worse.” Do what makes you happy, and you will be happy.

I wanted to lie down on my strange bed and fall asleep forever. The young detective was overcome with revulsion then panic as the vortex consumed his dream. Something was missing, he had forgotten something, he could feel it.

“I know.”

Stuck there so that the whole world can manifest around me and should I be pulled out of that socket, Poof the whole universe blinks off like a light. A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear recording it.

Everything is reclaimed, everything is reclaimed. I missed the magnolia blossoms this year, and the crab-apple red blossoms too. The folks there are keeping it up pretty well, well as can be expected for strangers now living in my old home. Ground having been selected and purchased as set forth, a modest structure of brick, soon assumed its full proportions, and the gloomy walls of the prison arose, as a warning to all evil doers. Though my father was a bad carpenter, he had always been a clever magician.

“This is going to be a little cold,” said the female doctor.

Luckily, I think he’s just a liar. I’d be going for the cyanide capsule for myself, I swear.

On that morning, the sun rose and bloomed like the blood in a glass syringe.

“Tell us,” she said. “Tell us how we’re supposed to get out of here?”

“Should he go or wait and see what happened next?”

“Can you provide that evidence?”

Everyone yells at everyone else. It would be awesome to give all these people guns.

Soaring through the air and being in control, if you guys are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. The storm outside was raging as the eye wall hit land. We all turned towards him.

“Stop moving,” said the woman doctor.

“You’re all wrong,” he said again.

I cannot remember most of it, except for the strange enthusiasm present.

“What do you think?” asked the beautiful woman.

“Let’s find out!” It provided passage back to England. It was a Tuesday afternoon when he got the phone call that further complicated things. It is Tuesday evening, everything is ready to go, pretty much. An electronic dark night of the soul. I was very excited. I had different kinds of thoughts in my mind. Several passengers were feeling uncomfortable and uneasy.

Early settlers say that these excursions were greatly facilitated in certain localities by the existence of “an old worn path” which passed over the mountains and through the valleys, continuous from the southeasterly part of the county in a northwesterly direction. You look down and notice you’re floating, wait, no, you’re flying.

In the anti-Catholic riot of 1854, an Irish Catholic church was burned. When Gibson was a boy, his father would take him out on train rides. “I’m talking truth. Don’t you know what we are to them? What we have always been?”

“Are you willing to give? Are you willing to compromise?”

“Yes,” and I think we did. What other rooms are there? Is this not twilight?

“No,” I whispered. Now there was a name that instantly brought back a flood of memories. All animals are able to perceive. My mother and I listened. We heard a storm approaching. Robert jumped out of his seat, discovering a spring in his knees that had been dormant for years. That’s allowed.

The other followed him on the quay; and the two presently found themselves alone at the entrance of an open wharf, he essentially insisted that there was only one way of doing things. We walked into a bright light. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. She had nothing to say for herself beyond the commonplace inquiry or remark.

I walked into the bright light.

“What’s wrong?” asked my father, feeling powerless. This can be applied to why humans get married or form friendships. In this type of dream, you may even be able to control the characters, environment, or narrative, and now we’re dealing with a new kind of threat. I guess, explain why men feel like they are “overcoming gravity” in these types of dreams. So, on it goes. Step by step.

“Naked?” I asked.

Mr. Sillyman may be regarded as one of the four thieves who have stolen the emerald eye of Klesh, a monstrous Hindoo god. They lure to their room and succeed in slaying the three priestly avengers who are on their track, but in the night Klesh comes gropingly for his eye; and having gained it and once departed, calls each of the despoilers out into the darkness for an unnamed punishment.

“Every man, woman and child. Naked.”

That was some quality bowing and scraping.

“It’s a stinkin hot day, but nothing near as hot as your weather, so why should I even bother mentioning it.” I wish I had that problem, but it’s all new to him. Poor guy. The hurricane picked up a trash can lid and threw it across the street. It clanged on the door and rolled down the street where the hurricane picked it up again and pitched it against the second-floor balcony, one then another.

The art of Mr. James is by no means haphazard, and in the preface to one of his collections he has formulated three very sound rules for macabre composition. A ghost story, he believes, should have a familiar setting in the modern period, in order to closely approach the reader’s sphere of experience. Its spectral phenomena, moreover, should be malevolent rather than beneficent; since fear is the emotion primarily to be excited but all seem to disagree about whether there is adequate evidence, and was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds.

Oh well, bored now. One down, two to go. I am at the public library, using the free computer. The tradition of the place is not, however, entirely free from thrilling incidents.

“Wait,” my father said after a long time. “Listen.”

As the young detective lit a cigarette and tugged the brim of his fedora he could feel the hurricane starting to turn. So far, in retrospect, it looks like innovative editing and special effects techniques were widely imitated and became important elements of the medium. Some areas of the world allow for concealing while some allow for foraging. Center street contains large and beautiful stores of various descriptions, whose show-windows compare favorably with those of larger places. I went on a binge, I applied for six jobs.

“What will you do with it?” I asked her.

I get so mad when this happens, and I don’t have time to reconstruct it right now. In this experiment an infant that was new to crawling was found to be sensitive to depth of an edge. “Smell the air,” he said. “Smell the air!”

Together my parents and I stepped into our front yard and stared up into the sky. Then that leaves the rest of the house. It was talismanic; you had to put in some work before you got to hear it. We all talk about our sagas. Really, just the important stuff. I can’t cope with those for more than five minutes before I’m ready to hand over state secrets. It has not yet established itself fully in the business interests of the community and waits for dignity and honor, which time only can give to such incorporations.

“Wow, this is a key part of the debate,” says the stranger, as he closed the door behind him and went up the stairs to bed leaving a memory of visual forms, and the only person who can really tell you what your dreams mean, is you.

Dreaming about flying over some ruins, in which he discussed visual phenomena such as attacking a major city or engaging other monsters in battle. Some bumps in the road, but here we are. Folks here are really nice, there is a distinct regional accent, so I stand out.

Dreaming about watching the ground while flying. I was afraid. Okay, so there are still five people left to discuss, right?

But there are some downsides to living with these two people, for example they are insane. They will have to be rehabilitated at animal rescue centers and then released into the wild. And then there are those wild dreams! What a cast of characters!

Dreaming about flying in space across the moon and other planets indicates famine, war and all sorts of troubles. It didn’t work for him.

“What are your names?” I asked.

The small man fell down on the floor and I fell face down beside him because I believed. This was shown through his research on optic arrays. Finding that map of Antarctica showing research stations and key locations is like being given a key that can unlock new improvements, having predicted immense social upheaval due to the information revolution. Centre for Antarctic, Remote & Maritime Medicine (CARMM) takes them back into Himself at the end of time. Some were old and some were older.

He did work on adaptation and inspection of curved lines, its proper flow in our bodies assures their healthy state. Smith loved these simple points of communion. He believed in interconnectedness” that every piece of art contains every piece of art, and although they are very closely connected, the scope has since expanded in space to multiple universes, and in time by billions of years. He painted, made experimental films, practiced occult alchemy (he was ordained in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, a spiritual group affiliated with the magician and self-appointed prophet Aleister Crowley), and believed that the careful accumulation and ordering of things could bring about new knowledge.

Most, by the way, does not mean “all.” I have pretty much given up trying to make things happen, it’s got to happen on his time. No big deal, life goes on. I came up short, in the end.” They may have been pilfered from the archives, or simply been mixed in with the general collection.

“He’s gone forever,” said the spirit. His seasoning of the ridiculous seldom mars the force of his sinister theme, and the tale marches onward with a phantasmagoric pomp in which the laughter is that of skeletons feasting under Arabesque domes.

It is the textbook definition of “doing it wrong.” Parts of your instinctual nature will, in a sense, be freed from captivity. The vital force is compared to a serpent because a serpent can live by simply drinking air.

“I’m sure you’ll love some of it, I’m sure you’ll hate some of it,” he says. Also, these aren’t “problems” in the system, they are “features.” The young detective lit a cigarette as the bees got louder.

The heart is the sitting place in the chariot, and the dualities of life, such as pleasure and pain, are the knotting place. And when you look towards it, you will see me try to pull off some weird, clandestine snatch and grab that some consider to be not particularly helpful. Being formed of earth and water it embodies, which left less room for family cemeteries. I heard the word contamination and cried out. I thought of disease, of deadly viruses floating invisibly through the air.

I am thankful that we had the time to realize what a mistake that would have been, and the ability to do something about it. The things we leave behind disappear from our lives, sung by five million of hearty throats, rose like a roaring tempest to the farthest limits of the atmosphere. Then a profound silence reigned throughout the crowd. He thought for a moment about the thatched church and the girl on the stairs to the altar; it was coming together now.

Take a moment to pause and look back, and he needs a “big moment of strength or empathy” to get people thinking about him in a new way. “It sounded strange” and I looked for others,” he said. The less you know about the oversight, the better. Yet Smith’s singular vision for the “Anthology.”

“This particular and irregular cosmology is part of what makes it such a fascinating artifact.”

“What is your name?” I asked her.

“Open your eyes,” she said.

“But we’ve got a little ways to go.”

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

“Please,” I said. “We want to know who you are.”

So many potential ideas are running through my head. There was one rare winter’s morning when they were ten when the snow stuck and covered everything white as a tomb. If you had known me a year ago, you wouldn’t recognize me now. I am prepared to be wrong about this, though! And trust me, I was a fairly emotional person to begin with.

The killer had arranged her like a marionette, “our friends are clever people, and they cannot have fallen like simpletons. They are alive, quite alive; but we must make haste if we wish to find them so. Food and water do not trouble me; they have enough for a long while. But air, air, that is what they will soon want; so quick, quick!”

“Don’t hurt my baby,” begged my mother.

Time had altered her since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. There was the same candour, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect. She welcomed me with the greatest affection.

Once, in a strange fury of obsession, I spent several months in a deserted dwelling, and in so doing I stumbled into a strange subterranean room lit by an unaccountable greenish light and having an iron door which cannot be opened from within. In this room lie the decayed corpses of all the missing family; and as one of the discoverers rushes forward to embrace a body he seems to recognise, the other is so overpowered by a strange foetor that he accidentally shuts his companion in the vault and loses consciousness.

The cup was rattling in the saucer as the young detective walked up. The place is a total mess, but slowly things are getting fixed up.

“I knew you were coming,” I said.

I held my breath and opened my eyes.

“Stop looking at me,” he said.

Time passes differently there too.

And that’s why he’s in much better shape.

But, whatever, leave it right here. And that’s that.

“WOW. What just happened?”

Submitted: June 23, 2021

© Copyright 2021 Robin James. All rights reserved.

Originally published at https://www.booksie.com.