Alan Loewen's Blog, page 39

Diesel-Punk Super Short For Your Amusement

Diesel-Punk Vignette,by Alan LoewenALL RIGHTS RESERVED
For Amanda and Nick

To say the air stank of diesel would be an obvious understatement. Fifteen levels below the surface of the city of Harrisburg, fresh air was a precious and sometimes unattainable luxury.

Amanda and I sat on the oily floor of a narrow service tunnel waiting for Nick to return from his scouting and scavenging run. Many more levels below us, diesel converters created the new life blood of a world far different from the one of my childhood. Even though separated by miles, my body thrummed in resonance with the vibrations of their unceasing labor.

When American scientists found a way to create cheap diesel fuel from elements deep within the Earth, an unholy marriage of mechanical engineering, nanotechnology, and cheap fuel collapsed the government to make way for corporations, the true purveyors of power. The Middle East went bankrupt, the dollar soared, pollution went out of control, and lifespans dropped. The Age of Diesel reigned supreme.

“See Nick yet?” Amanda asked. I looked through the grating into the dimly lit hallway.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Think a Custodian found him?”

“How would we know?” We sat in silence for a few moments. “I’ll tell you what," I said, if only for the comfort of hearing myself speak, "Let’s give him a half hour. If he’s not back by then, we’ll set out on our own.”

“A shower," Amanda said with a sigh. "A shower would be so welcome right now.” .

I looked at her and smiled. “Oil is supposed to be good for the skin.”

She plucked at her tresses. “Certainly not good for the hair. I can’t remember the last time I had a shower. If we can get out of here …” Amanda was interrupted by the sound of running feet making staccato echoes down the hall.

I peered through the grate, ready to duck back into the shadows. “It’s Nick!” I said.

Opening the grate I held out my hand. Deftly, Nick grabbed it and with a leap, slipped into the access tunnel next to me.

“Close it up!” he hissed at me. “Custodian!”

I managed to close the grate just in time as a Custodian lumbered into view. It walked out of a cloud of its own exhaust, its diesel engine purring inside it. An ambulatory ball of metal and hate, it had its weapons at ready. Instinctively, I pulled back from the grating as Nick and Amanda slid back into deeper shadow.

It lumbered past our hiding place and I noticed that a small spray of fuel jetted out its back where a large knife had penetrated a chink in its armor.

We waited until it was out of hearing and it was only then I noticed how hard I was trembling.

“Nick,” I said, “it was injured. You do that?”

He grinned at me and pulled three protein bars from his pocket. “Yeah, I tried to sever its fuel line, but they’re buried rather deep. Gotta get me another knife now though.” He tossed a bar to Amanda and me and then ripped one open for himself. “Had a little trouble getting these,” he said as he waved the bar in my face. “Store owner didn’t like me taking them without paying so he screamed for a Custodian.” His grin got broader. “And got some even better news. Met a contact. Found a place where you and Amanda can hide for three days. After that, there's sure to be some other group of rebels to keep them busy. They’ll forget all about us.”

Amanda looked up from her protein bar. “You said the hiding place was for Father Bowser and me. What about you?”

Nick spoke through a mouth full of protein bar. “Got a place too. It helps to have a network, but my personal hidey-hole only has room for one.”

I shook my head. “Nick, it's too dangerous. You don’t know how badly they want us.”

Nick waved his hand at me. “You worry too much. You guys will be as safe as if you were back in your sainted mothers’ arms.” He leaned in close. “There’s a guy I know who isn’t very happy with the Corporation Hegemony. He’s got a perfect cover for rebels like us.” He pointed at Amanda and me. “You two are going to become new converts to the Zen Blessed Iron Meditation Sacellum.”

“Are you out of your ever loving mind?” I asked. “If you think …”

Again, he waved his hand in front of my face to silence me. “It’s just a cover, preacher man. You fret too much.” He scooted forward to survey the hallway.” “It’s clear,” he said. “Not a soul, living or metallic.”

Carefully he pushed the grate open. “Don’t close it,” he said to us before he dropped to the floor below. “We might need to come running back here.”

I let Amanda go next and she gracefully jumped down to join Nick. Moving my legs over the edge I took an assessment of the drop. “Stand back,” I instructed. “I’m going to make a racket when I land.”

True to form, my fall was not graceful and the impact of my metal prosthetic legs on the floor created a deep echo that resonated down the hall. We stood still for a moment waiting for sign the echoes had roused a Custodian or something even worse. Delving deep into the earth’s guts to get at the elements that created diesel, we had stirred up things best left alone like rock slugs or slime molds.

After a moment, we took off down the hall, following Nick who stopped at every corner and intersection to scope things out. We met the occasional worker and even surprised a group of drones, unemployed humans who scavenged the underground tunnels for spoil. Dangerous though they might be, they weren’t in the mood to tackle two healthy looking people and an old man with oil-stained metal legs. I might be a cripple, but if I kick you, you’re not getting up right away, if ever.

It was up two levels in the main tunnels we had to be extra careful. Custodians stood on guard and even though we would be hidden by the crowds, our safety would be iffy at best.

Eventually, we made it to the market level. Moving carefully through the mass of humanity, the smell of fried rat and fresh-baked protein bars from the food courts made our mouths water, but we had no credits and it was too risky for a snatch-and-grab. Not when we could see three ambulatory mechanical balls standing still and silent over by the far wall, Custodians that could kill us in a heartbeat.

It was off on a side tunnel that we found an old mechanical shop with a symbol of the Zen Blessed Iron Meditation Sacellum below its name. An old man came out, wiping diesel off his hands with an already deeply-stained rag. He spat on the floor and his saliva was as brown as the fuel he worked with. He looked at Nick. “These the two new converts?” he asked.

Nick grinned. “You got it,” he said. “And they are here for their 72-hours of mandatory meditation to get to the 2nd level"

The mechanic motioned us to follow and deep within the shop, he kicked some garbage away from a stained door. “You’ll be meditating in here,” he said.

The room was just slightly larger than a closet. “You got your 72 hours and then you're gone. Crapper is down the hall. Kitchen is to the left. In the fridge, you get only what’s in the bag. Don’t be touching the rest.” He glared at us for a moment. "And you don't leave this room unless you absolutely have to."

“Appreciate your help,” I said.

“And it would be appreciated if you didn’t talk to me anymore. Now I gotta get back to pounding metal.” Without another word, he turned and walked back toward his workshop.

Amanda hugged Nick and I shook his hand. “You sure you’re gonna be safe?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in three days. Try to behave.”

“You too,” I said.

With a grin Nick waved and left us to our temporary shelter.

We never saw him again.

Yet I have my suspicion that Nick made it after all. Last week when the Rebellion swore in the new leadership after winning a two-year long civil war, a man in the background on the vid screen, though looking older and a tad battle weary, bore that same familiar grin.

I can't be certain, but I have that feeling ...

THE END

The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1916): A Review

Late last night I completed the second book in Sax Rohmer’s series about the fiendish, master-criminal Dr. Fu-Manchu and it was exactly the pulp tale I expected to be. That was not meant to be an insult. I love the old pulps and I don’t read them for their literary merit, but for their momentary diversion they provide with their outlandish, exaggerated tales of heroic exploits, over-the-top villains, and heroes that are either muscular (Conan of Cimmeria), intellectual (Sherlock Holmes) or both (Doc Savage). And of course throw damsels that are either innocent victims or deadly enemies into the mix and you have...well at least for me...a few hours of entertainment.

Of course, the old pulps are also politically incorrect, but if you have a rebel streak and are neither affected or offended by views of the dead, unchangeable past, the faux pas are easily ignored.

In The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1916), we return to the London of Dr. Petrie, the erstwhile friend of Sir Denis Nayland Smith, a colonial police commissioner in Burma. In the first book, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Fu-Manchu is introduced as an agent and assassin for a Chinese secret society called the Si-Fan. Throughout the tale, Fu-Manchu causes a lot of problems for Smith and Petrie and at the end, Fu-Manchu’s plans have been thwarted and he has escaped back to China. Now, three years later, Petrie has resumed his medical practice in London and Smith is back in Burma, but Fu-Manchu is not dead and his threats and danger are very present and very real.

The only irritation I have about the early stories is the incredible ease by which Smith and Petrie fall into Fu-Manchu’s traps. In Chapter 28, Fu-Manchu actually goes into a traditional villain’s monologue mocking them for their stupidity in falling for his traps time and again, never learning from their past mistakes.

And that is before Fu-Manchu introduces the readers and Smith to the Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom, an ingenious torture device consisting of a segmented body cage and the introduction of four starved rats.

“In China,” resumed Fu-Manchu, “we call this quaint fancy the Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom. The first gate, by which the rats are admitted, is called the Gate of Joyous Hope; the second, the Gate of Mirthful Doubt. The third gate is poetically named the Gate of True Rapture, and the fourth, the Gate of Gentle Sorrow. I once was honored in the friendship of an exalted mandarin who sustained the course of Joyful Wisdom to the raising of the Fifth Gate (called the Gate of Sweet Desires) and the admission of the twentieth rat. I esteem him almost equally with my ancestors. The Sixth, or Gate Celestial—whereby a man enters into the Joy of Complete Understanding—I have dispensed with…

Yeah, this is a great pulp series that in spite of its flaws can still thrill the reader.

On August 5th, 2010, I started logging what books I read. The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu is #214.

You can learn more about the literary and cinematic world of Dr. Fu-Manchu here and here. You can read The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu legally free here and here.

Prince of Darkness (1987): A Review

Mild spoilers follow.
 
Prince of Darkness (1987) is a guilty pleasure of mine, an odd, surreal horror film directed by John Carpenter and reuniting the director with actors, Dennis Dunn and the late Victor Wong, both of which also appeared in Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China released the year before. The late, great Donald Pleasance also reunited with Carpenter for Prince of Darkness, the two having first worked together on the set of Halloween (1978) . Shock rocker, Alice Cooper, even makes an appearance as a possessed homeless person.

Though the premise of the film is intriguing, the film itself is deeply flawed. In the opening scenes, Professor Howard Birack (Wong) looks into the daytime sky to watch the moon and the sun come together for an eclipse. That night, student Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker), looks up at the full moon. This scene is actually repeated during the film. Not astronomically possible.

We are supposed to believe that Jameson Parker’s character as well as his love interest are college students even though both were 30 years old at the time and show their age.

Donald Pleasance, playing a Roman Catholic priest, types out a letter and his hands are clearly not on the keyboard.

When Pleasance's Father Loomis (he is named only in the script) and Professor Birack enter the crypt under the church, there are candles burning…hundreds of them and yet the church has been deserted for days if not weeks. The film is full of these fun little flaws.

Donald Pleasance brings a presence that without him would just be a silly little movieBut what I like about this film is that it is one that can honestly be placed solidly in the canon of Lovecraftian fiction. Lovecraftian elements of the film are:
The premise of the film solidly embraces the sheer materialism of H.P. Lovecraft in that all metaphysical and supernatural phenomenons are nothing more than science taking place on a quantum level where it can be analyzed and understood. Satan has a physical reality. Jesus was nothing more than a physical being from another planet or dimension who tried to warn Earth about Satan. Satan's father was "a god who once walked the earth before Man that was somehow banished to the dark side," a description very similar to the gods of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The Brotherhood of Sleep, a secret Roman Catholic order that has the job of overlooking the incarnation of Satan (a large eerie crystal tube of swirling green liquid). The Brotherhood has a big weird book written in Latin, Coptic, Greek, and “numbers” reminiscent of Lovecraft’s famous Necronomicon. The universe is not a safe place for humans or logic. From a lecture by Professor Birack: "Say goodbye to classical reality because our logic collapses on the subatomic level into ghosts and shadows... While order does exist in the universe, it is not at all what we had in mind." Dreams are a gateway to other realities. When asleep, characters receive messages from the year 1999 via “tachyon transmissions” warning them of the impending global disaster coming from within the church itself. And the atmosphere of the film with its increasing dread where a team of professionals (like Lovecraft's professors at his Miskatonic University) fight a malignant force. This is Satan. Really.As I said, the film is flawed. Most of the characters are there simply to die in interesting and graphic manners, but there are some scenes that are incredibly powerful, such as the first time Father Loomis and Professor Birack encounter the huge cylinder of swirling green liquid. In fact, I believe that it is Pleasance and Wong who carry the film in its entirety. If not for those two actors and their powerful ability to put a grave atmosphere on a flawed film, nobody would ever remember the movie. Whenever they are in camera, the movie shines.

All in all, I cannot recommend the film, but for some people like me, spotting the rare gem amongst the gravel makes the movie an interesting momentary diversion.
Out of 13 characters, guess which four live to see the end of the film.

The Sinister Minister's Thanksgiving Confession

I repost this every Thanksgiving without apology, and, yes, I'm a member of the ordained clergy.

However, I will apologize to Edgar Allen Poe for reasons you will soon discover...



The Sinister Minister's Thanksgiving Confessionby Alan LoewenALL RIGHTS RESERVED

It has now been a good ten years and I feel this desire to unburden myself of secrets.

Anyway, there is little that any of you can do. You all live far away and most will treat my tale as a jest, so ironically even in the midst of confession, my secret is still safe.

We talked in the security of my office, the day before Thanksgiving.

He was a newcomer to our congregation. He glared at me, pale and cadaverous with eyes that burned with the fervent heat of fanaticism.

“Pardon the dust,” I said. “We’re remodeling the church.”

Intent as he was on his rant, he ignored me and the dust even though an occasional sneeze would interrupt his diatribe.

“I insist on addressing the church, this Sunday,” he said, his fist weakly pounding his knee as he spoke. “From the pulpit! You shock me, pastor, and I am deeply offended! Last Sunday you spoke on Thanksgiving as a holiday, even a holy day. You let an opportunity to teach a lesson on true holiness to those gibbering simps pass you by. Even now, they are out at the stores buying turkey and pumpkin and yams by the bushel so their unproductive elderly and their squalling brats can shovel food into their mouths. Well, what about the third worlders who today will only have corn bread? What about the freshwater porpoises? What about the labor practices in South America?”

I nodded in feigned sympathy. “Our church,” I explained, “places a large amount of its budget into charity. Though I confess we do not have a world impact, our local circle of influence is quite large.”

“Not enough!” he screamed. “Not enough! Do those hypocrites still drive cars that burn gasoline? Do they still have their thermostats set above 60 degrees? Do they still eat organic meat?”

“Well, they are almost all hardworking farmers and have been for generations …”

“Soybeans! Soybeans make tofu! They could grow organic soybeans!”

“May we walk as we talk?” I asked. “I did promise to inspect the masonry work.”

He stood up from his chair following me and gesticulating wildly. “And why are we wasting money adding on to a building? This certainly is not the church that Peter and Paul would have attended!”

We wandered the dusty hallways to where the workers had stopped for the day and gone home for their Thanksgiving preparations. As my companion ranted and raved, I inspected a recently completed concrete wall.

“Forgive me,” I said casually interrupting my companion, “but this workmanship here has me concerned for safety reasons. Could you help me test it? Just stand there.”

I laced a steel chain through the eyelet of a restraining bolt wrapped it around my companion and passed it through the eye of another. A few moments work was all it took.

“What … what are you doing?” my companion stuttered.

“I believe that because of my sad and selfish bourgeois attitudes, I have driven these poor manual laborers--these poor day laborers--to produce shoddy and dangerous workmanship. Please tug on these chains. If their work is truly inferior, I can protect them and their reputation from the building inspector and they can still keep their jobs.”

My companion tugged on the chains. Years of fanatically strict fruitarianism had weakened him to the point of inability to put up much of a resistance.

“Well, they seem strong enough,” he said. “Now please release me.”

I picked up a concrete block and laid it on the tile floor in front of him. “You were talking about Thanksgiving. What should I do with the turkey and other comestibles my arrogant wife is preparing for my greedy family?”

Freshly primed, he launched into a plan to drop ship the entire meal into either the Third World or New Jersey with an ingenious contrivance of fair trade Styrofoam packing and dry ice.

I let him ramble on, as I worked on my job of creating a second wall.

It was now five o’clock in the evening, and my companion still droned on how eating Thanksgiving turkey contributed to global warming.

Yet, my own task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier of concrete blocks. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of my noble, altruistic companion. The voice said --

"Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! -- a very good joke indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it during church -- he! he! he! -- over our chicory coffee -- he! he! he!"

"Thankgiving!" I said.

"He! he! he! -- he! he! he! -- yes, Thanksgiving . But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting you at home, your lady and the rest? I could treat you to some organic miso. Let us be gone."

"Yes," I said "let us be gone."

"FOR THE LOVE OF … "

"Yes," I said, "for love!"

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I put an old Sunday School flannelgraph. For the last decade no mortal has disturbed it. After all, who uses flannelgraphs anymore?

The church’s janitor complains that for the last ten years on the eve of every Thanksgiving she finds a small paper plate with two Saltine crackers next to a paper cup of water before the wall they built in the education wing. The one they built ten years ago.

I simply shrug my shoulders.

So on Thanksgiving, I hope that all of us, without guilt, will enjoy a hearty time of fellowship and celebration around a table groaning under the weight of food. And that once a year, we taste a little of heaven and relax and enjoy the camaraderie and the closeness of loved ones in spite of our mutual humanity.

Especially my own very weak humanity.

But if you find yourself railing against this simple annual pleasure and your thoughts of disgust and self-righteousness and contempt mar the celebration for others, please come visit me and explain it all to me in detail.

Just forgive the dust in my office. We’re remodeling the church.

Is Your Life Magical? No, It's Something Better

The constellation of Orion the HunterLast night the heavens were crystal clear in their aspect and Orion, my favorite constellation, was a spatter of diamonds and rubies and sapphires that would have put the most illustrious jewelry store to shame.

The right shoulder of Orion is made up of a star with the name, Betelgeuse. 
Betelgeuse is 643 light years away and as a red supergiant is so huge that if it was to trade places with our own Sol, the surface of Betelgeuse would almost swallow up Saturn. 
As I delighted in its beauty, the photons of its light that struck my retinas had left the surface of that star in Anno Domini 1372, when Britain and France started wrapping of the 100 Year War. Columbus' discovery of the Americas was not to happen for another 120 years.
Because of its size and instability, at some point Betelgeuse will become a Type II supernova. In the fury of its death throes, the light will be so bright that for a short period of time, Earth will enjoy a second sun in the daytime sky, or if the star is visible in the night sky, we will have a light brighter than the full moon.
Actually, Betelgeuse may have already perished, but because of the distance, even though the star is already spinning into a dead neutron star, because light only travel 186,000 miles a second, we will not be aware of the loss of Orion's right shoulder until 643 years after the event.
The night sky is filled with such incredible stories of magnificence.
So is your life filled with magic? No. Something better.
It's filled with wonder.

The Ultimate Role-Playing Game. Wanna Play?

(Note: I posted this on an old blog many years ago and I want to warn you that I got a lot of negative feedback on it. However, I still like the concept because just consider this for a moment. What if your life really could be an adventure?)

I was reading an article on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test results and I thought of my counseling model and how everybody fulfills certain important roles.

Huh! I thought to myself, life is nothing but a big role-playing game!

PARADIGM SHIFT
I suddenly had a vision of you, gentle reader, sitting around a gaming table filled with the brick-a-brac of role-playing games: dice, pencils, paper, rule-books, little figurines, maps. I was there too along with all your friends. The Game Master (GM) sat in shadows.

We had played every RPG in existence. We had plumbed deep space, deep dungeons, and our minds. We were nothing but jaded players who had wore out all the novelty and we longed for the time when we first thought of the concept with the rush of excitement, the camaraderie, the unfettered rush of our creativity.

Now we sit in the gloom of the gaming room, but suddenly the GM makes us an offer of another game, a different game, one suitable only for an experienced player like you and me.

A tiny, nondescript box, smaller than your hand, is slid to you across the table. It is unmarked except for a small yellow button in its middle. To push it, the GM explains, is to enter the most creative role-playing game in the universe, but once the button is pushed, you must play the game to its completion. The rules are both simple and complex, but the game is in a free-form style. There is still a GM, but now it will be more up to you to decide in far more detail how you will live in the game. A character will be designed for you, but once the game starts, you have the freedom to do whatever you wish within the parameters of the simple and sane game rules. "And," the GM says, "the game is going to give you challenges that will make the past ones I've given you look like children's playground stuff."


Congratulations, bold player.

You push the button and you find yourself within the game, sitting at the very computer in front of your computer, sitting in this body you now occupy, reading these very words on the screen before you with all the memories, experience, talents, and abilities you now have. You may not have liked the way you were rolled out (who has ever rolled out a perfect character?), but you have some ability to change those statistics.

Welcome to the game which is already in progress. You know the rules.

Time to play.

What's your first move?

Join Me On Goodreads!

It'll be fun. I only bite on days ending with the letter 'y.'

Link is here!

Somewhere Across The Multiverse, You Are An Evil Despot...Sounds Like Fun!

Not a complaint, but a lunatic observation about quantum mechanics. Last night, and I will not illuminate on the story, as I sat in a formal dining room, to the amusement of the surrounding tables and the stunned expressions on the faces of my parents, I received a public tongue lashing and I could not reason with the individual that lacking divine attributes such as omniscience, I could not have known what the angry individual claimed I should have known. In fact, it later turned out to be nothing but a serious misunderstanding and miscommunication between other people that involved neither me nor my parents.
This blog is meant to be light and silly and promote my writing, but in truth, my real life is already filled with madness and deadlines and sorrow and moments of sheer terror, so comparing the angry individual in relation to my real responsibilities, I blew it off as an insignificant event in comparison. Yet on the lengthy drive home I entertained an intriguing fantasy.
Quantum physics, or quantum mechanics or quantum whatever, presents an intriguing theory that we live in a universe that is merely one of many. One theory states that we are copied in multiple universes and for all practical purposes we all have a doppelganger that occupies every possible niche of existence.
As I drove home on the dark foggy roads of Michaux State Forest keeping an eye out for suicidal deer, I contemplated somewhere in the multiverse, my doppelganger sits at a table ruling as a barbarian despot. As I bang my oversized turkey leg on the cracked and warped wooden table and demand my massive mug be filled once again, I scream for my chattel to bring out the dancing bears. As I bray with laughter nobody dares raise their voice to me less they be turned into kibble for my dire wolves.
I chuckled at the mental image and for a scant second I entertained the seductive allure of careless evil, but, he says with a sigh, it matters not. In this universe, I have serious work to do, promises to keep, and loved ones with genuine needs that must be met.
You do too, so get cracking, but for a moment entertain the thought that another version of you somewhere across the multiverses (IF the theory has any merit) is having a ball. Then raise your coffee cup to your dopplegangers across the multiple cosmoses before returning to your unique and singular life in this one.

Strange Streets (Another Sample For Your Enjoyment)

Strange Streets is up to 2,000 words, probably the most I've written (as far as writing fiction) in the last two or three months.

"I love the madness my life has become," he said sarcastically.

Anyway, James and Darcy have continued their foray into a very strange part of Carlisle, Pennsylvania and James is getting rather weirded out.

The first sample is here. Another new unedited sample follows. Enjoy.

 *******

“James, look!” Darcy pointed down at the stream that flowed under the bridge. “What is that?”

Floating lazily in the water, a large fish, similar to a Japanese koi, broke the surface and looked up at us. A part of me, some alien observer deep within my brain, nonchalantly noted that it had to have been at least six feet long and its purple scales with streaks of green formed a color pattern I had never seen on any other fish in this world.

“We need to leave, Darcy,” I repeated. “We need to go back. Now.”

Darcy ignored me. She stood alert, her gaze fastened on a shop on the other side of the bridge. She whispered something, but all I could catch were the words, “here before.”

Strange Streets (Urban Fantasy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania)

Last week I found myself wandering the streets of Carlisle in south-central Pennsylvania marveling at the little odd shops and boutiques: doll stores, oriental noodle restaurants, stores that sold women's fashions modeled on those of the 1920s, and the seeds of a story began to germinate in my fevered little brain.

Life has become very busy with major responsibilities and I've temporarily retired my novel, Doll Wars, but I still have time to play with the short story format. Strange Streets is about a young man and his cousin exploring the streets of Carlisle and they find themselves in ... well let's say they find themselves in the odd part of town.

My only dilemma is that I'm torn between three very different endings.

Here's an unedited sample of the story itself:

*************
Yet, before I could come to the full realization of what I was seeing, Darcy had floated to the next window, I obediently following in her wake.'

The next window contained smoking pipes, but ones of a style and material I had never seen before. Odd arabesques of what appeared to be wood and meerschaum created fantastic structures barely serviceable for their intended use.

Open wooden boxes of what I first took to be tobacco lay scattered about the display, but this time my Darcy-befuddled brain saw through to see the absurdity of their contents. “Surely, they don’t mean to smoke that!” I said.

Darcy narrowed her eyes and peered through the window at the display. “Why is that, James?”

“It’s not tobacco,” I said. “Look, those are dried ferns there and that one is nothing more than a box filled with tiny flowers. And, see? Over there are dried mushrooms.”

“Maybe,” Darcy said after a moment’s pause, “they are there only for display?”

I laughed. “Then they are carrying the joke a little too far. They have prices per ounce on each box. I bet the police watch this place closely.”

As Darcy led me away to the next window, I saw out of the corner of my eye movement deep within the interior shadows of the store. The silhouette was certainly human, but something about it gave me a moment’s pause as if there was something slightly wrong about the store owner whose outline I had glimpsed. Probably, I thought with a burst of dark humor, the proprietor has been sampling his own wares.

The next store had in its display window a simple pile of broken tree branches. I looked at Darcy and shrugged.

“Maybe they are for artistic arrangements?” she mused aloud.

I laughed. “Carlisle is a college town. Heaven knows what oddities they sell and why.”