For Dolls and Demons pt 2 - Join the Club

Part One

First time I went to The Leather Lizard, it was around two p.m. on a Sunday. Strange time to go to a strip club, I’ve been told, though I’ve often wondered, when is the “normal” time?

There were countless visits afterward, but I always go back to that first time. After I got hooked on Candy, I began working more and more to be sure that my place in the club would always be secure. Money might not make the world go round, but you sure won’t get far in a titty bar without it.

It wasn’t just the naked women I liked about it. It was like an X-rated Cheers; like a support group where no one had to admit they had a problem.

As a programmer, my schedule is fairly spastic, yet every time I came in the cast of characters was the same. Maybe the dancers changed, it’s hard to keep track of such things.

But, there was Lana, my waitress. If you don’t know, the waitresses at these establishments are one of two breeds; they’re so damn cute you’d trade a footfull of toes to watch her dance, or they’re the type who, with one look, you understand why they didn’t see necessary to have bouncers up front. Let me put it this way: I’d screw Lana before I’d screw her over, and I’d probably be just as afraid.

Petey B tossed bottles behind the bar. The kind of barkeep who never worried much with measuring out his shots, so that a two-fifty well could kick the ass right off any of the name brand mixes. He had three runners, two of them cute Asians. I took them for twins at first, but I’m a bit racist I guess because they’re not related, one’s Korean and one Vietnamese, and there’s a five year age difference. And, I can’t ever remember who’s who. It’s really dark in those places, in my defense. The other runner was a scrawny, squirrel-bearded metal head—my instincts said meth head too, but who knows—who looked like he must’ve gotten the job with a fake ID.

The main man with the dang plan—as he reminded the audience at least once per shift--was resident music magician DJ Operata tha Hot Potata. A white man should just not be able to have dreads so full and vast as his brown locks were, but judging from his marijuana tattoos and jewelry, I assume he’d given it a heartfelt, dedicated effort I could never appreciate.

Lana brought me my fourth rum and cola, round about six that afternoon when the first wave of A-teamers was beginning to take the stage. Petey B must have run out of cola on the second because I had a blazing fire stoking my chest, puffs of courage pouring out like the smoke rings I was trying to fashion.

A few dancers had stopped by, taking a seat on my left knee and asking for a cigarette or a light, sometimes both. One after the other, almost without fail, they would cup my hand in theirs and shove through my resistance with fire-lit eyes, sucking instead of dragging on the cig. What the technique lacked in originality it recouped with its effectiveness. It was a good thing I’d just gotten paid, because each set of flames melted another lap dance from my wallet.

Wednesday was a long-legged Nubian number with the kind of tone-but-ample backside that oh so very few of my honkey brethren have learned to appreciate. For the early evening dancers, she was quite a jewel. She had deep, heavy eyes that blinked purposefully, and only every few decades of awkward chit chat. Even when I’m paying them to pretend they like me, I’m still nervous with women.

I believe I was explaining how the role of Green Lantern is dissimilar to, say, Superman or Spiderman when Wednesday mercifully interrupted, “Do you play pool?”

I thought about lying but realized she might call me out on it, perhaps inviting me for a round of billiards and brew back at her place where she roomed with several of the other dancers. Don’t stop believing, ok.

I compromised, “Well, I’ve played but I’m not very good.”

She smiled sensually, her cheeks glowing through the dark. As her cheekbones seemed to rise into her temples, she surrendered a laugh. She released my non-smoking hand, which I don’t know when she had grabbed, and put both of hers to her mouth trying to catch the runaway giggle.

“What?” I sighed, presumptively embarrassed.

“Pool. It’s…” she bit the inside of her lip, “a code of sorts.”

I tried to convey my facial expression as “Oh I see,” but she did see. She smiled sweetly and took my hand, and walked me to a back corner with a low, deep armchair. A techno remix of a couple of Southern rock hits, I know them but I don’t know them, came on and she went about her routine.

With each pass of her mouth near my ear she would demystify a bit more until, even my simple mind, surmised that for four-hundred-bucks, she would take me in the back and… Well, something really cool was going to happen. I never precisely figured out the specifics.

When we returned to the table, I excused myself to the restroom, where I counted my cash. I could get a private throw and about four more drinks, just enough to help me cope with what I had resorted to. But when I returned to the table, a quarter-smoked cigarette with a pinch of bright pink on its white butt sent up a smoke-signal, floating away like the Ghost of Call Girls Past.

I sunk back into my drink, which was now mostly melted ice, and scoured the room for Lana. When I spotted her, she was coming down the steps of a section so exclusive I hadn’t realized it was there. To my tax bracket, it may as well not have existed at all. After a few passes of the strobe, I could just make out Wednesday’s bare back as she replaced her top.

Lana came to me, a crowded tray from the VIP section giving her an off-balance approach. “Wednesday was called away, Sugar. Fella over there said he’s got your next drink. And dance.” She gave me a look that was a little embarrassing, as if to say, I know you’ll like that.

“Well, I’m waiting on Wednesday anyway, so unless he wants to share…”

“He picked out someone else for you. You’ll like her.” She started away from my table but stopped after a few waddling steps. “Ya want the dance or doncha?”

Of course I did, so I followed her, stopping briefly at the bar to cash in my free drink. “A Godfather.” Even Petey B didn’t know that one; amaretto in Scotch. “Dewars,” I corrected as he went for the well.

She led me into a room which had, much like the VIP section, been invisible since I’d arrived. I sat on a plush couch, afraid to look at the seats too closely under the black light. After a few minutes of bass shaking my greater head back into prominence, I decided to slam my drink and leave.

“Ok, gents we gottanother hot mother—What! Shut yo mouth!” prattled DJ Operata, “Why doncha whip it out and give it up! Easy guys, I mean the dollaaaaaaassss. Hey! And it’s getting’ a bit cuh-ra-ra-ra-razy up in hee-uh! Des-ti-neeeeee, got a switch in the rotation, move that moneymaka’ to the main stage, while Mrs. C-c-c-candy, gets dandy with one lucky guy! You too fellas, got the dolla they’ll make ya holla…”

Then Candy came into my life and everything else sort of disappeared. Right then and there.

###

Candy was out for at least twenty minutes and I was worried. I’m not around much trauma, but that can’t be how long you’re supposed to be out, right? She finally stirred, her body contracting then swimming headfirst across the couch, stretching like a cobra from a pot, with an obnoxious yawn. It was cute on her.

She looked about; at me, her stuff. “What the…” Her eyes froze in saucer shape. Then her irises ticked about the room, the rest of her remaining perfectly still. “You need to go.” She emphasized the word strongly enough I almost did.

“We’re ok. One look at my little buddy,” I raised my hand, the roly-poly exploring it, “and they turned tail and ran.”

“They don’t run, they regroup.” She popped from the couch like a magnet pressed against its own and crashed into me, her hands pelting me with gentle—though I think she was going for tough—shoves toward the door.

I pirouetted behind her, afraid that I might not have the upper body strength to resist her if I tried. “Candy, I don’t mean to be a dick, but I just saved your life and you’re really being…” I couldn’t say anything mean to those pretty green eyes, “Rude.”

Those green eyes weren’t nearly as pretty when she snapped back her lashes and fried me with them, hissing, “Fuller is an idiot,” she struck the d and t sounds like they’d done something wrong. “He kidnapped me because he knew Benny was looking for me.”

God, it was only a day ago, I realized.

“Benny’s lookin’ for the redhead, Petey,” said the scrawny bar runner, apparently convinced that the blaring club tune would keep his secret. “He says he’ll give fifty-g to anyone who brings her in. Seventy if she’s alive.”

My heart split into dozens and the pieces scattered to play bumper cars from my ribs to my ears. I felt like the throbbing from my blood must have been making my skin bubble. I guess not, as they kept talking.

Petey B pressed out a sarcastic laugh, and I swear he checked me out in his peripheral. “Someone snatches up Candy, they ain’t bringin’ her in alive. That’s fact.”

“Are you listening!” she demanded the rhetorical question, somehow, rather than feigning any sort of inquiry.

“No,” I hollered defensively. I’d missed the word I wanted to say, but hey at least I was in the ballpark. Usually I would’ve tried to get away, so I counted it as a small victory in and of itself. Baby steps.

“I am,” thundered what I guessed was the voice of Satan’s meaner big brother, the sound flooding the house so that it seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Then I fainted. Only seemed fair.

For Dolls and Demons

" 'Sgonna kill ya."

I nearly swallowed my cigarette, its tip not yet fully ignited as my broadened gaze slid toward the cartoon-witch voice coming from the shadows in the alley behind me. The blanket of darkness split and peeled backward, as my confusion did the same, pitifully illuminating both the vagrant woman and her actual meaning: the cigarettes would kill me.

I snorted a single heavy, anxious laugh that made my head tilt back and my chest puff forward, like a six-foot-three PEZ dispenser in the flesh. I shook it off and returned to my vigil.

If the door to "the Casino's" secret entrance were a pet, it would've been put down long ago. It grunted and groaned as it trudged open into the alleyway, rather than in like a proper door. I had read the archaic concrete scrapes perfectly and the door stopped maybe an inch from my nose, the proximity affecting a reflexive wobble in my crow-footed stance.

My balance is always lousy, but if you factor in my nerves, the awkward stance--I could've just stood further back, hindsight has shown me--and the three hearty sips of courage from earlier that night... well, simply put: I was screwed. I lost my balance completely and headbutted the door soundly. The collision swatted the inner doorknob into the kidney of one of Benny's two bodyguards; a bonus.

"What the..." Benny Delgado's shocked expression as I rounded the door was a far sight more intimidating than my toughest, most concentrated war face, I'm sure.

I almost shrieked in horror as I felt my left arm rear back and deliver a blow right between Benny "The Demon's" eyes, my index knuckle in his nose and my pinkie exchanging loud cracks with his front teeth. The blood spewed across my fist, an odd reminder; this was the first nose I'd bloodied since fourth grade, and back then that kid--full disclosure--that chick tackled me and kicked my ass.

But Benny Delgado didn't kick ass, he made ass disappear from the face of the fucking planet. So I was already hauling mine around the corner of the next block by the time his goons could decipher his bloody, screaming mumbles, "No naftner 'im, ya funkers!"

There was no time to waste. I grabbed the corn husk doll--you can take the boy out of the country...--from the pocket of my hoodie and pressed it against my fist until it had sopped up more than enough to fulfill my purpose.

The hoods' fancy shoes, the spoils of money much bloodier than Benny's corn-husk effigy, rapped the pavement like a heavy metal drum solo.

My guts plummeted into my pelvis. Faster than my conscious mind could navigate, I went from being horrified that I wouldn't get control in time, to mortified that I had. No turning back now; the shit was real. I must have looked like a ghost when I spun to face my pursuers, because they simultaneously skid to a hault, their expensive heels chirping on the asphalt.

Never doubt the value of spectacle. The two oafs murdered offenders as routinely as you or I might say "Bless you" to a sneezer; just a habitual reaction, a recitation. But when they saw a grown man, moments from an ugly demise, turn to them wielding a doll, they were thoroughly unprepared to respond. The doll danced through the air, hopping across before my chest like a game piece in my trembling hand.

I'm pretty sure the fella on my left was about to laugh, the one on the right about to draw, when they heard the unnatural clicking of much nicer shoes than their own; both heels coming down at once, then toes coming down at once. Rat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat.

Thugs love to brag. And, no story could ever top the one about the guy who broke out the doll right before they shot up his knees and tossed him in a trunk, and then... But they wouldn't get to tell that story. Their boss bounced toward them as if riding the world's greatest pogo stick, each bound taking him fifteen feet up and out.

With the goons distracted, I had time to concentrate, but barely. I closed my eyes and pinched the doll's arm. As I bent it from direction to direction, Benny likewise groping about in response, I tried to find his thoughts--namely the thought "Where is my gun?" His mind was like a steel cage, though. Couldn't make out a thing. Luckily, on the doll's third reach, "The Demon" Delgado caught hold of his pistol and whipped it around front.

The befuddled thugs had plenty of time to draw down on their boss. But, they wouldn't and I knew it--I didn't have to make him kill them. Without their boss, they were as good as dead anyway. Those types don't really function properly on their own; I'm sure they were as afraid of losing their orders as they were their lives.

I shook the doll's arm, visualizing firing at the other two men, until I heard several clicks from his empty gun. I had complete control of his limbs, but I wasn't taking any chances with a monster like that; I wanted that gun empty. I stepped over the goons, but stopped just on the other side. Entranced or no, I still couldn't stand face-to-face with the head honcho.

Angrier than courageous, my voice quivered, "You ever hear the name Candy Ferrari?"

His eyebrows wiggled, struggling against my control. A hot coat of fury wrapped around me and before I knew it, my puppet was pistol whipping himself into unconsciousness.

I took his keys, ran to pull his car around, and shoved him into the trunk of his own sedan. I slammed it shut with a loud sigh of relief--no, respite. I shivered off the heebie jeebies, like I'd just plucked a brown recluse from my hair.

~~~

When I reached Mr. Fuller's mansion, the guard at the gate asked me to pop the trunk, "Just need to check."

I clicked the already-locked doors, for effect and rolled my window only half way. "I'll let Mr. Fuller check. Thanks, though." Rude wasn't my usual approach, but I was almost done. I was ready to be done and if he didn't open that gate so I could go through, I was going over it.

The guy sighed, I'm sure reminding himself how grossly underpaid he was. After rolling upward in frustration, his eyes fixed widely on the pistol in my hand. As he realized the butt was toward him and the business end aimed at my thigh, he remembered to breath and took it with a loud, visible gulp.

The platinum-plated handle had the engraved head of a laughing demon on one side with "Benicio" inscribed below in an elegant script, on the other side was the crying face of another demon above "Delgado." The guard swung behind him, keeping his eyes locked suspiciously on me as he slapped at the wall until making contact with a faded gray button. The gate clicked and then hummed and rattled aside for me to pass.

I've been a conjurer since I was knee-high to a duck, but until that moment, watching that tough guy lock his eyes on me like he was worried I'd do something to him, I never really felt powerful.

I sat on the trunk, my plaid high tops swinging back and forth with a soft tap of the bumper. I was in baggy blue athletic shorts, and an aging red hoodie that said "Dragon Slayer" with a faded-but-colorful illustration of a beheaded dragon above the pocket.

The wind carried a chilly haze of water from the massive fountain centering the driveway outside Mr. Fuller's front door. Every few minutes my glasses would begin to slide from the moisture or the lenses would fill with specks of water and I'd have to remove them and wipe them off.

I hate fidgeting with my glasses. I feel it draws unnecessary attention to my nerdiness. Talk about fueling a well-stoked fire.

At his leisure, almost as though he'd just happened across his driveway, Mr. Fuller approched the trunk wearing a silk smoking jacket--and I believe nothing else--and carrying a highball. He was the portrait of ill-gotten gains with his perfectly manicured mustache and falsely black semi-circle of hair.

"Let's see it," he grinned impishly. He looked like he expected a trick; maybe someone dressed up like Delgado, or maybe an out-and-out double-cross ambush. Or a mermaid, any damn thing but The Demon Delgado.

"I want to see the girl." I tried to sound like the hero in the movies but I could tell from his laughter that I had failed.

"Fuck you, buddy," he chuckled, his harsh words almost dispassionate, and motioned for me to hop up and pop the trunk. I did.

"Well God damn, boy!" he beamed into the trunk at his opponent, tied up in bungie wires and the string that should have been holding up my shorts--you work with what you have.

Finally he looked up at me. When he did, I saw a look I'd never seen; not directed at me anyway. He was impressed and he didn't have the words. His lower lip protruded slightly and his head bobbed slowly in an approving motion. He sized me up, trying to figure out whether it was worth asking how I did it. He must've decided it wasn't.

He realized he was inadvertently praising someone, someone he would just as soon have seen fed to Delgado's Rottweilers. He snapped out of it, with a sigh of disapproval--which he pretended was for me--and slapped his eyes across Delgado. Rage filled him like a balloon. "Go get the whore," he shouted to any of his men, sending his misguided hatred my way.

"She's not a whore." I felt that sense of power again and from the look on his face, he could feel my power too. We both knew I didn't know what to do with it anyway.

Laughing away his concern, be it ever so mild, he regarded me like a child. "Sure, she ain't. Good to know." He might as well have patted me on the head and called me "little fella."

They brought Candy out of the front door, her curly red hair pinched by the black tie around her eyes. Her hands were untied, but either elbow was held by a man weighing no less than two of her. They released her hands and she untied the blindfold. She looked at me apologetic but grateful. She scuttled down the stairs and to my side. As she passed Mr. Fuller, he looked at her with a smile that made my insides sizzle, my chest and ribs pressed out to their limit until it felt like my skin would rip. He winked at her and raised his glass. I took the black tie from her hands and rubbed the rim of his outstretched glass, distributing a bewildered pause to all around.

"With just your saliva, I can do much more than I did to him. Leave us alone." Now that I wasn't trying to be hard, only granting fair warning, I think I sounded much tougher.

His face shifted from anger to a sort of pity to a disgusting amusement. His gross smile returning, he taunted, "Well, alright, hero. Hope you and your princess live happily ever after." His laughter was a rumbling chuckle as he looked back and forth between us. As my face hardened his amusement grew until he could hardly speak the words, "Fuck off, you moron." He shooed us away as he began directing his men on proper Delgado disposal.

Candy started off without a word. I followed her, clumsily as I always am, and finally caught up with her at the gate.

"You shouldn't have come here," she said shaking her head and averting her eyes. She looked pitiful, miserable, at her wit's end. But, she didn't look like she would cry.

"What are you talking about? Those men were going to kill you."

"So?" She looked almost mad; sympathetically disappointed. "What does it matter if they were going to kill me? Now you crossed Benny, he's going to kill you."

"I don't think he's going to get out of there," I felt the morbid smile creeping in and disguised it quickly by contorting my mouth from side to side. The improvisation, as usual, made me look much more foolish than the smile would have made me look cruel... or whatever I was worried about looking like. Dammit, I'm a nerd.

As I berated myself quietly, Candy started to walk away again.

"Wait!" I shouted.

"He's going to get out. And he's going to get you. And then, he's going to get me back. It was sweet of you to try," as she said this a shit-eating-grin built in my heart until she continued, "but you're a goddamn idiot. You shouldn't have involved yourself." She started away once more, her high heels squeaking with her gait.

"How can you say that? We're..." I didn't know what to say.

She stopped, spun and stared daggers through me. "We're business associates. You pay me, I dance."

I tried to at least look like I shrugged it off, "Pay you well." I could tell from the look on her face she didn't have the heart to contradict me; our understanding of money was quite different but she wasn't the type to make someone feel bad over a thing like that.

There was a clamoring mixture of shouts, gunshots, and profanities. Then, from beyond the gate came the loud, moan of bending metal. From the darkness and confusion, the sedan shot into the air and landed on the fountain, sounding like a train wreck caught in an avalanche.

"Oh no," her voice collapsed.

"I'll protect you," I swore.

She looked at me, dumbly, her beautiful lips parted silently as she watched me as though expecting me to go "Just kidding!" She took a deep breath and her ample breasts distracted me with their ascension. When I looked back to her face, I saw the fugitive tears finally making their way home. She tried not to look at me, "They aren't after me. Benny's already got me. I'm not like... one of you."

From the smoke cloud engulfing the front lawn, I saw the form of seven or so men and women, their path apparently ending where we stood.

"But they are." She looked from the figures to me urgently. She was frightened, but unsurprised, as though she'd known exactly what was going to happen. "Go, please."

I could see in her eyes that there was something. Maybe not feelings--not real, actual romantic feelings. But, there was something. And that was enough.

"Wanna see something cool?" I smirked at her. I could feel her anxiety as I stooped and dug around in the foliage along the gate. Finally, I found an agent, and it was a good one: a pill bug; roly poly; man's original best friend.

I held the little fella in my right hand and grabbed her hip with my left. It was hard to stay focused and ignore the remarkable sensation of touching her hip, finally; the club has rules, you see.

Then with a few words that I can't spell and you wouldn't know what to do with anyway, I channeled the tiny agent's might and matter into a towering black dragon. I looked at her and for a moment I swore she was going to laugh delightedly at my skill, but then she just fainted.

Oh well. I may not be smooth, but I get the job done.

Ninety Degrees of Fortune Pt. 3 - 5

The next 3 installments continue along the same six-sentence constraint as the previous 2.

Parts 1 & 2

Pt.3: Excommunication
Above the heads of the trembling guards blocking his path, Raverus saw the shanty village where the former Inlanders had taken up residence. The villagers--his wife among them--were gathered behind the Guardsmen to witness what threatened to be quite a spectacle.

As Chief Watchman of the Three Genies, Raverus was proudly famed for his superhuman might and inhuman mercilessness. But seeing his own soldiers amassed in ad hoc armor--slate and cookware mostly--and all of the fearful faces of the villagers--his friends days before--so enfeebled him that his hand dove limply from his sword with the gravity of the pit in his stomach.

He raised his hands in the air and offered a truce, but they would field no compromise and forgive no fault. Without their standard armor and weaponry, he could've fought them all and won, they knew it too, but their traitorous revolt had drained him of his fight, for now.


Pt.4: The Prostrate
Rendered virtually naked by his sudden expulsion from the camp, Raverus wandered the chill desert night until he found himself surrounded by the men riding on what had very recently been his soldiers’ horses, armed with weapons from the Emperor’s arsenal--his arsenal.

“The Emperor wishes to see you,” said the man wearing Raverus’ helmet, as the others inched toward their captive with the business end of their weapons, emphasizing that the invitation was not optional.

When they arrived at the palace, Raverus in shackles and his sword absconded by the guards, the young Emperor rushed to the warrior and wrapped his arms around his knees. The boy Emperor rambled on excitedly about something to do with famine, questions about the land, the structures, the weapons; the Outland dialect was very choppy and Raverus struggled to follow.

His astonishment at the young man’s blind, ignorant gumption--to even imagine Raverus would consider helping the thieving little snot or his people--melted into rage as he assembled the facts: these soldiers who had brought him in hadn't eaten in several days. Raverus swiped his sword from the hunger-stricken guardsman and claimed the heads of the closest three men, ensuring that its skill had not been diminished by captivity. He aimed his blade at the Emperor for several moments before choosing to save himself the trouble; these people were suffering plenty.


Part 5: Enemy to Your Enemy
Raverus had been a celebrity in the Inlands; the Chief Watchman of the palace was the man charged with the proud duty of defending the Emperor’s sacred artifacts, namely the Three Genies. And for his failure to fulfill that honor, his own people, banished from their kingdom into the Outlands, had banished him from their makeshift village.

The Emperor had reached the throne through a tunnel of good intentions and idealism, with one single wish, but looking back from the seat he could see no light. His people were as unfamiliar with the conditions of the Inlands as Raverus’ people were those of the Outlands, and in a very short time Inland and Outland would all be the same: dead as the dirt.

A change must bring them together, thought the man with no land, as his fingers massaged the handle of his sword with a brilliantly terrible suggestion. Raverus had often boasted that it would take two of the Outlanders’ armies to defeat him; now, he would create the opportunity to test that theory.

Ninety Degrees of Fortune

This is a series of six-sentence stories (from http://sixsentences.ning.com/ -- highly recommended social network for writers), more to come shortly.


Part 1: Ninety Degrees
“What’s atcha got there, lil’ fella?” Raverus asked, trying not to sound or look as anxious as he was.

The little boy turned around holding the hourglass sideways in front of his face, its fluorescent aqua inhabitant shining his glow onto the young man’s broad, toothy swoop and revealing to Raverus and the crowd that he was one of those filthy, poor, unruly miscreants from the Outerlands.

“Won'cha go on an’ give that over t’me, kid?” he said, not working nearly as hard to soften his words now.

“No, I found him!” the boy shouted, taking a step back as he shook his head and turned the hourglass vertical. The genie swirled down slowly, granting the boy’s silent wish. Raverus was angry, probably the angriest of all those in attendance, but he knew better than to insult the Emporer.


Part 2: Penance
“It’s quite a long fall, is it not Raverus?” asked the High Witch, whose chuckle-laced words might have been mistaken for frog croaks--particularly given the gangrenous forest green hue of her rotting skin--were Raverus not already familiar with the sound from previous encounters he had wished to forget.

“A boy, one of the Outerlanders, found one of the Three Genies,” he said, sliding his jaw from side to side, grinding his molars in disgust at the humbling act of imploring a Witch, no matter how “High” the reprobate may have esteemed that kind of magic.

She croaked through another slimy rattle of laughter, “They’re Inlanders now, Outlander.”

Raverus’s chest slowly inflated with an indignant sip of the squalid Outerland air as he stood at the foot of the mountain separating the two lands. “I need you to change things back before my people suffer these conditions any longer,” he hissed tempestuously, though careful not to offend her.

She faced him, her natural eyes replaced by empty sockets that peered deeper into him than their former residents would have been capable, and said slowly “Nothing has changed for me to undo.”

Pts 3-5

Not Pictured

Jocelyn had introduced four of the hottest artists in the country over the past two years. She was known, to put it mildly.

Not that an art promoter, even a highly-influential one, would be particularly “credible” in all circles, but she wasn’t a nut either. Still, she knew that artsy types were theoretically given to bouts of eccentricity; if she weren’t thought to be insane, then it would have been suspected that she had done some bad drugs, or gotten trapped in the spell of a dream or some other such nonsense.

She smiled at him. As she did, she recalled a guy she’d dumped because he vehemently believed in Bigfoot--she had told him “commitment issues,” but it was the Bigfoot thing. Now, she was having her umpteenth meeting with an alien.

His body was perhaps too long and slender but otherwise could pass as human, if not topped with a hammer-like, leathery black head.

They couldn’t talk, of course, but art can leap that hurdle. In their first encounter she was convinced it was a dream. She had slept in the gallery, not uncommon before a big show, and awoke to find Ernie (that’s as close as she could get to the sound he made when gesturing to himself) and a few others exploring the exhibits, examining each work with due appreciation.

Ernie was the only to return. He was an artist, it turned out. Once he felt safe enough to share, she was mesmerized by his skill. He expressed himself unlike any other painter she’d ever seen.

The visions, the emotions he conveyed…

If she were to show the world, to share these works, they would be relentless in their pursuit of the painter. She couldn’t do that. No way. The world wasn’t ready for this beauty.