A Matter of Perspective

Frostbite previews and pre-orders are rapidly approaching with the paperback releasing on Amazon on June 21 and the ebooks releasing on July 5. In the meantime, though, I thought I would return to a favorite short story of mine. I hope you all enjoy.

"I think it might have been a car dealership," Bellandra sounded quite confident in her statement. The old man on whose shoulder she perched knew better than to trust her on matters of ancient human archaelogy. "I bet they sold a lot of SVUs."

"You mean SUVs. SVU was a television show that suffered from recurring plot syndrome." He paused to consider the buiding,"That ivy-covered husk of a building? I don't think so. Where is the sprawling lot for their inventory? The garage for their detail work? The altar for their human sacrifices to the gods of capitalism? No, this most certainly used to be a donut shop, Bel." Malachi crossed his arms and nodded, almost able to taste white frosting and rainbow sprinkles across his tongue.

The purple skinned pixie flattened out her wings, the air vibrating across his left eardrum. It reminded Malachi of a fat late summer dragonfly buzzing by. Bel could be irritated by his correction all she wanted; it did not magically transform the ruins from a pastry palace to Al's Deep Discount Auto.

The two of them had been playing their guessing game for most of the day. Bel had yet to guess a single ruin correctly. In her defense, the warm, wet Georgia climate had helped the vegetation and rot to reclaim downtown Atlanta faster than other cities the duo had visited. What few clues to identity remained were being rapidly obfuscated by the newly emerging rainforest.

Frustration never lasted long on the face of his blue-haired, white-attenaed companion. "What was a donut, Reverend?"

"Hey now, what did I tell you? I can't be a preacher without a flock, now can I?"

The fairy clapped her hands together excitedly. "Oo, I can be your flock, I can be your flock!"

Malachi mulled over the offer. "Quite fitting, I suppose... a strange congregation for a mad pastor. Very well, then... I am restored as a sinecure. Now what was it you wanted to know?"

"Donuts!"

"Ah yes, donuts. A simple pleasure for simpler times. People would take fluffy pastry bread, fry it in oil, inject it with cream, lather it in chocolate, and smother it in powdered sugar and sprinkles. This was back when people could still appreciate edible hedonism. Before pleasure had to carry risk of deadly viruses or mind-wrenching psychoactive chemicals. Had a rough week? Eat a donut. Don't want to be awake this early in the morning? Eat a donut. Wife cheating on you? Donut, donut, donut.

Man and pixie stared out again at the tall brick structure, its edges gradually rumbling into dust. Even Bel knew what had happened at the End. Mankind's desires devolved, regressed: donuts and french fries gave way to marijuana and "free" love. In the blink of an eye, even those weren't strong enough for the addicts and it was soon cocaine and fetish, then meth and pedophilia. The Internet was the death knell of civilization. The high pinnacle of technology allowed instant gratification to man's lowest impulses, accelerating the already rapid dehumanizing process.

The riots came fast and brutal. The bestials wanted to marry goats and chickens. The pedophiles wanted to adopt children. The druggies demanded legalization, while the legalists called for the wrath of God upon all of the above. The pimps, cannibals, sadists, cloners, masochists, rapists, wackos, weirdos, commies, racers, skaters... everyone wanted what they wanted and they wanted it now. A well known preacher of the End times had devouted lengthy sermons to every vice known to man, except of course for his own wicked predilictions. That in the end was what did it: "They" wanted everyone to accept their own favorite vice, but refused to recognize anyone else's as legitimate.

Los Angelos was the first to go; the initial cause of the riot was a labor disagreement over whether the company should cover recreational drugs in the union's health plan. New York and Paris followed shortly over a corrupt political party and a sin tax on prostitution, respectively. One by one, cities became war zones; the enemy often former neighbors from down the street. People fled or died. Those that fled found conditions no better elsewhere and were ill-prepared to survive wilderness living. The technology age quickly gave way to the ever present stone age.

Reverend Malachi brushed a green tendril from his well worn gray leather duster. Genetically engineered variants of Kudzu were going to force him to cut his Atlanta tour short. Belandra stared at the rubble across the street in awe. Malachi gave the building another look, noting a large cursive "C" on a red background behind the mass of mossy vegetation. At least, he thought it was a C, though "O" or even "Q" were not out of the question. The building had been tall, very tall for a donut shop. Maybe his longing for sugar and frosting was overriding his anthropological judgment.

"Do you think I could fly all the way up to the top? I bet the view up there is great."

"If you want. Just watch out for the kudzu. It's feeling a little frisky today." He knew she would lose interest mid-flight, but had learned that pointing out Bel's short attention span was a good recipe for a sulking fairy.

As man retreated into obscurity, other creatures, long rumored extinct, returned to the world. Bel and the pixies were one such race. Fae, hobglots, sluagh, dwarves, chattawomps, kobolds... magic was taking hold of the land again. It had never left, of course, just slumbered, a short nap through science's brief reign. Sometimes they helped humanity adjust to the strange old world. More often, the returners helped man inch his way closer to extinction. Mutually beneficial pairings like Belandra and Malachi were the exception, not the rule.

Malachi felt the pixie's tiny narrow feet land on his shoulder, but when he turned to look, Belandra was nowhere in sight. Instead, a young man in a red vest, white dress shirt, and forced smile stood behind him. The grin was most surely fake, the kind one pulls out of the closet to put on in the morning with the rest of the work uniform. His shiny red nametag proclaimed him to be "Kyle".

Kyle's hand tapped Malachi again before retreating. "Sir, can I help you? Are you lost?"

"Why, yes, yes, you can help me. Could you tell me what that building was?" Malachi gestured at the tower of crumbling cement and rapidly growing vines.

Kyle looked a touch nervous, but answered promptly. "That is the World of Coca Cola museum, a part of the Coca Cola International headquarters."

"I see. DId they used to..." Malachi caught his tense and shifted appropriately, "I mean, do they make donuts there, per chance?"

"Donuts... no, sir. They make soft drinks."

"Soft drinks? Like water and sugar?"

"Yes, sir." Kyle was clearly not enjoying the conversation.

"Did you hear that, Bel? I was half right, at least. They made donuts you could dirnk."

"Sir, are you okay?"

Malachi shook his head. "No, I haven't been okay in a long time, son. But I can I'm making you uncomfortable. Why don't I do us both a favor and just move along? I've rested on this bench long enough already."

Malachi stood and brushed back an overeager tendril of vine from his duster. When he removed his sunglasses, carefully folding them into his breast pocket, the jungle foliage around him shimmered away, leaving behind only normal bench, city,and nervous looking employee. Malachi smiled and nodded at him, then wandered off towards the distant bus stop.

A soft pixie voice whsipered into the cup of his ear. "Shouldn't we tell him? Can't we tell them the disaster that's almost upon them?"

Malachi glanced back at Kyle, before shaking his head and continuing on. "It wouldn't do any good, Bel. People don't want to know the future. I know I sure don't. But the vision isn't always the same. Maybe it won't be moral degeneration."

Bel sighed. "No, it could be terrorists with nukes, an escaped super virus, or a giant meteor. But in all of your visions, people get wiped out. We should tell them."

Malachi chuckled. "They wouldn't believe me, darling Bel. They'd lock me up as a crazy old hobo. But they don't all end that badly. There is one hope..." Malachi's voice trailed off in to the noise of approaching traffic.

"Do you really think we can find him?"

"If we can't, you better learn to cook kudzu soup."