Montauk

Flaherty was sleepy.

There he was again. The drunk or maybe junkie. The guy had that nondescript look. Worn jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.

He’d stopped by the fence the other day.

Casey figured he was Italian American. At least he looked and sounded Italian American. He’d tried to quiz the guy on his background but didn’t get anything but requests for directions.

Flaherty didn’t get paid enough for this sort of thing. He wouldn’t leave the warmth of the guard shack again.

The hoodie guy who Flaherty had simply decided to mentally refer to as Tony sat down cross legged on the road in front of the gate.

It was kind of weird but then again the guy was probably high and Casey didn’t get paid enough for this. He just continued browsing.

After half an hour went by Casey Flaherty was beginning to get the creeps.

There was one thing Casey hated more than the cold and that was being spooked. It made him mad.

He burst out of the guard shack slamming the door all the way open against the corrugated metal.

“Hey! Hey Tony what the hell! Buddy I dunno what you’re getting at but you’re gonna need to move along.” He yelled approaching the gate.

The brown eyes beneath the shoulder length hair were just calmly regarding what was directly ahead of them.

“Look buddy if you wanna escape reality do it somewhere else…” Flaherty growled as he opened the gate.

Tony was motionless.

“I’ve had enough of this creepy shit,” the guard muttered under his breath as he approached the vagrant.

“Hey buddy knock it off will ya, I’m just tryin’ to finish up my shift here and I don’t need any shenanigans.”

“I was lonely dude. I didn’t know what else to do. My uncle kicked me out after he got wind that I was AWOL”

“Look I got sob stories too, ones that can make paraplegic orphans feel lucky, but I don’t go around acting like a freak.”

Tony just stared. Jesus this was annoying. Flaherty kinda liked the guy and didn’t wanna rough him up.

“Alright, look my friend… here’s a twenty now go get yourself a beer and find a shelter. In fact I think St. Martha’s has one. If you go there ask for Sister Nora. Tell her Casey sent ya. She’s my cousin and loves helping sad little shits like you. Now scram.”

There were a few tense moments and Casey breathed a sigh of relief as the stocky WOP rose and smiled.

“Thanks dude.” Tony turned around and walked towards town.

Casey made sure that he saw the weirdo disappear completely over the horizon before he turned around.

All the lights in the compound were turned off.

“Motherfucker…” Flaherty was very very angry.

The Archivist  Chapters 1 – 3

The Archivist – Chapter Four

 As per the schedule I posted, I am supposed to have written something fictional today. I’ve taken on new responsiblities this week and wasn’t able to write anything fresh. I wrote this a year or so ago. I feel this story is quality enough and that most of my readers haven’t stumbled across it before. I hope you enjoy.

Jack London is a huge influence and I love forests.

The goal of this is atmosphere. I feel that atmosphere has its own value.

The bears danced.

I am the wolf and I watched.

The bears danced and ate honey.

I hunted hares and kept the pack in check.

Every fortnight I’d come by the circus tent.

To see the bears loafing about.

On one such occasion I finally spoke. “Hey, bear. Hey. Why are you there? Aren’t you bored? I miss stealing your kills”

The bear rolled one way than another. Then with a grunt of much effort roused himself up. It seems that riding a unicycle had wrecked his natural motion. Swaying to and fro he pressed his face against the bars.

“O it’s the thief. There’s no moose here. Go away.”

I laughed.

“So bear why don’t you answer my question. Why are you here?”

“Don’t you see these bars?”

“Sure. But bars can’t make you ride a unicycle.”

“Still unpleasant I see.”

“Not true. I am as pleasant as the frozen wood, as kind as a bright moon, and as lovely as a spring meadow. It is you brother bear that is unpleasant like iron bars, unappetizing as rotten fish, and as sickening as stale honey.”

“The winter kills, and your kind robs my cubs of meat, here I know that I will live.”

“You call this living? Complain as you may about me feeding my pack with your spoils but I see no cubs here. You have no legacy. There are no young bears for me to teach the art of watchfulness. The winter and I have made you strong and clever. Yet here you are abandoning a million moons of sorrow paid wisdom.”

“You call baying at the moon a wisdom and dying in scarceness strength?”

“I do not bay brother bear. I sing songs of raising myself from the inert earth to move triumphant over her surface. If the cool mist of morning brings no game and I return to inertness than others will run over me. Young pines will grow from my body and bless the earth with air. Yet here in this gaudy place you are inert before the earth has swallowed you. You have become an abomination. A living death.”

“I disagree strongly I’m afraid. Here is water, here is food, here is shelter.”

“This may be so but here also is slavery here also is castration. Listen, this spring has not born me many sons. I tire of hares and foxes. The numbers of my pack are not sufficient to bring down a delicious moose.”

“What business is it of mine, gray thief?”

“Your cousins can not sustain themselves either. The men on the floating pines have taken much of the salmon. I sat outside many dens. The she bears fear for the future. Your cousins offspring is scrawny and the chance of enough fill for hibernation scarce. Mighty moose is great in number. It is odd that mankind does not consider him to be toothsome meat. But herein lies the point brother bear. We can thrive again on the gallons of red nectar that run through moose. Let me break you from these bonds and return you to your kin.”

“You want to release me so that you can steal from me?” The bear chuckled.

“For a spell yes. When my pack grows strong we will take our own moose. This is the way it has always been.”

“No not always thief.” The bear continued chuckling. “But though you are a thief at the least you are an honest thief.”

“So you will come with me?”

“What would one old bear add? Are you not as you have described a mighty force of nature? Why not use your clever nose and your quick jaw to snag your own game?”

“Here there are three bears. You know that. You know also that even as you sit in iron confines so I too follow the iron laws of the wild. But the difference brother bear is that one iron sharpens while the other dulls. One brings strength and the other decay.”

“Your tongue is as silver as your coat, thief. And for my cousins sake I may leave this place. But I give no guarantee that I will not return here. Me and the others here are no longer accustomed to that life which you describe. And why should we trust ourselves again to wild winters and gray ghosts?”

“You know why brother bear. Deep in the caverns of your chest the beating of your heart is pulsing with our common earth. But words are cheap. Let me show you a wolfs cleverness.”

With these words I disappeared as silently as I had come.

Over the past month I’d been dividing my time between my own pack and the huskies in the town.

Some of these dogs were part wolf. So my appearance shocked none. After several members of these serfs had been dispatched in the wood just beyond their fence a fear spread among them. I doubted that in this isolation the men would bring new dogs soon. Without an alpha, and with few sufficient males, the advent of spring made sure that the bitches were in heat. I filled the niche of alpha here as well as in my own pack especially since I had the great good fortune of the men being especially inattentive. They even petted my head, fed me fish and called me “Stump” just as if I were the dog that I had killed.

Now the providence of mother earth knew no bounds. She wanted me, her priest, to bring balance. For my great good fortune went even further than what I’ve so far described.

There was a boy. Who was very soft with the bears. He was as gentle with us dogs as were the women folk. This boy who the men called “Charlie” had wide eyes and a weak chin like his mother.

He was nothing like his father the trainer of the bears who himself was more akin to bears than to mankind. However ill-fitting the son was to the task of managing these lumbering beasts it seemed that the father was set that he follow in his footsteps.

This as I have said was a great boon for me. For as the night after my conversation with brother bear wore on and Charlie came coo cooing softly to open the cage and dote on the bears I rushed him. None of the other dogs dared to intervene. I’d taught them not only fear but love.

He fell to the ground with a startled squeal.

“Wat ‘r ya doin, Stump! Git!”

I sat on my haunches wagging my tail.

“Brother bear, now is your chance.” I said as the beasts were lazily rising to see what the commotion was all about.

“Hrr..hmmm…” Said brother bear.

Charlie was getting agitated by the motion of the bears. Somewhere in the back of his mind a primal fear had been awoken. He was not in control of adorable friends. He was at the mercy of beasts and without a club.

I read all these things in his quivering voice when he tried in a vain attempt at authority, “Stump! Git! Get outta here!” He was walking towards me clapping his hands.

There was no sport in wounding him grievously. But I wanted to impart a gift of the wood. I ran up to him as if to play then leapt back.

He laughed.

I rushed again and delivered my gift to his calf which was as soft as the underbelly of a baby rabbit.

He howled such a plaintive and pitiable cry that I actually halted mid slide and cocked my head.

This unnatural sound was loathsome to all free beasts. It roused the bears. All three dashed from the cage as well as their decadence allowed them to dash.

Calmly I started to walk towards the door myself. Just before I made my exit I turned to look at poor Charlie as he sat on the dirt bleeding and whimpering.

“You…you’re…you’re not Stump at all.” He said as realization filled his eyes.

I took off at a light trot.

‘No, I am not Stump. I am not a stump at all.’

As per the schedule I posted here’s some music. I’ll try to adhere to it as much as possible though it’s subject to change in the coming week. Basically my reason for posting it was to make sure I produce a consistent output.

I hope you enjoy this. I think everyone should learn and publish music for a variety of reasons.

Chapters 1 - 3: The Archivist (Advisory: Salty Language, Adult Themes)

Camilla

The surface was smooth as it reflected dim lighting. Ted studied his features in this wooden mirror. He found it easier to examine himself than to try and make conversation with what he guessed was his friend.

“Care for another?” The bartender inquired.

“Yea, just make it a Yuengling.” He was drinking more than he expected and he needed to choose wiser or risk losing his internet for the month. It was hard not to drink though. Something about Dirk really put him on edge.

Dirk’s demeanor was languid but somehow also intense. He was leaning back in the chair nursing a lager. It seemed like he was looking through a window. Like he was watching something unfold. But there was nothing but a shelf of liquor in front of them.

“Trying to find a stronger medicine?” Ted asked attempting to dispel the unease.

“In a manner of speaking.” Dirk replied with the same chilly smile.

He wished he hadn’t asked anything. There was definitely a shift in Dirk’s voice. It was too urbane. Vidette had never been coonass but he was also not James Bond.

“That was some painting my man.”

“Yes, I suppose the client liked it.”

“It was a commission then?”

“Oui.”

“For what exactly?”

Dirk sat silently musing.

“A rather romantic notion.”

“How so?”

“Well, all that Doctor Böhm said was: paint sorrow.”

Ted felt a chill as he recalled the expression of the girl.

“What was it that you’d called the thing?”

“Camilla.”

“Was that someone you knew? How did you come up with that face? Who is she?” Ted was a psychology student and a humanist he felt it was important to bring Dirk out of his grief by helping him make the connection.

“She’s no one.”

“Oh, come on she has to be based on something. It was really good come on tell me.”

Dirk sat musing silently again for some time.

“As I said she is nothing. If I had to reach for an explanation I guess it’s that old house.”

“Your uncle’s place.”

“Non. That is a happy house.”

Ted laughed. He didn’t want to know what sort of house Dirk was imaging if he called that mad Alsatians place happy.

“When I was young my father had us fly to someplace in Connecticut.”

“Conneticut?”

“Yes, it was a business trip. Since he was state side he had us come there. His contact from Hart Pharmaceuticals had us all over for dinner to meet his family. I suppose it was one of those classic corporate butter-up events.”

Ted was a bona fide coonass but he felt he understood despite his class. “I see.”

“The family was normal. Langford’s wife was beautiful and the two children were twins. They were just about the same age I was at the time. Round fourteen I think. Right after dinner the brother went off to play games and the sister asked me to go to the garden with her.”

“So you were always a ladies man!”

“I suppose.”

“What was the garden like?” Ted was curious as to what any of this had to do with this painting.

“Extensive, surprisingly so, with several greenhouses. But the garden had nothing to do with the painting. It was that house.”

“Yea?”

“Oui. On our way out we passed a room. It was evening and the last rays of the sun were falling ever so slightly diagonal wise through a large lattice window. I remember her passing through that light and…” It seemed that Dirk’s preternatural calm was about to shift.

But nothing happened. There was just an awkward silence and that same serene searching gaze.

“I thought you said that this had nothing to do with anyone. That it was no one. So it was that girl?”

“No, it was the house. But these things are hard to grasp. I suppose that she did have a bit to do with it…”

“Aha?”

“Well, it’s just that as she passed through that light, as it danced across her face, for a second I thought I saw an older woman.”

Again Ted thought he saw the slightest quiver in Vidette’s Sphinx like trance.

“So it was based on somebody though. It was based on a person you thought you saw.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that. That it was someone I thought I saw. But…”

There was a long silence.

“But it was the house that did it. There was something about that room. About the way that the furniture was placed. About the furniture itself. It seemed like I’d stepped onto a sponge that had soaked in everything. And that all that everything had stained right through my sneakers into my bones.”

“What exactly was so spooky about it. Was it one of those old Yankee places.”

“Oui, very much so. Georgian architecture and the furnishings to match.”

“Power of suggestion. So was the girl called Camilla.”

“No, Martha Langford.”

“WASPS!”

“Yes, very much so.”

“But she wasn’t called Camilla?”

“No she was Martha.”

“What kind of name…man I would never call my kid Martha. That’s an old lady name.” Ted chuckled.

“Yes, she never like it. In fact she wanted me to call her Francois after she found out we were French. You know after Francois Hardy?”

“Francois is not much of an improvement.”

“Where is your patriotism?”

“In the Mississippi depths”

“Ah, yes you are proud of your American rusticity.”

“Oui.”

“But Camilla is the woman in the painting?”

“Yes.”

“So you think maybe Camilla was someone who’d lived in that house. Or someone like Camilla. That it played with you imagination the way that they’d furnished it and you gave in to the power of suggestion.” Ted was trying to be a psychologist again.

“Non. Camilla is the house.”

It was a very clumsy and senseless phrase. Ted didn’t understand it. Was Dirk trying to be dramatic? Yet. Something about it chilled him to the bone as he recalled the woman with the quiet blue dress and the downcast hazel eyes by the window. There was something about the gas lamp and the twilight through the lattice window coupled with that expression…the design on the brooch set in the belt just beneath the bust was also suggestive. That painting was imprinted in Ted’s mind forever. It had bled into his soul just as that old house had bled into Dirk’s bones through his shoes.

TFJ – Upload Schedule

Daily

• News articles, op-eds, and nonfiction daily at six pm EST

Weekly

• New Short Stories or Short Story Fiction Chapters: Tuesday and Thursday (8 PM EST at the latest)

• New Oddit Podcasts Wednesday and Friday at noon EST

Extras

• New Songs, Performances, Comedy, and Skits: Fri – Sun at variable times

Welcome to a new weekly bit of Oddit! I stumble across vaguely Orwellian things often these days. I feel they’re worth commenting on. Discuss!

Life in a democratic republic and life itself depends on conversation. The innovations of science, the insights of philosophy, and general bon homme are all the result of exchanging ideas. Let’s make sure we do it well.

I’m still figuring out the S8 Camera settings please bear with it. I felt it was time to start addressing some of the counterproductive things going on in terms of public discourse; and of course talk a bit about water.