Zyan stared through the bruising evening sky at a group of beings gliding in the distance around the Eastern Border Cliffs rising directly in front of him; he smiled. He had been coming up to the roof of his cloud-grazer apartment every day since his operation. The magnificent cliffs formed petrified draping that hid the mysteries of who he is, or was. He ran his left hand along a bandage running down the right back side of his torso then his right hand along the one on his left side. The wounds were still sore several days after the surgery. Tears welling up and on the precipice of their suicide journey down his cheek.

Zyan didn’t understand why his parents had made him go through the painful ordeal. He loved having his membranes and dreamed of one day confidently stepping off a narrow ledge high above his smooth stone and metal tower home, a home that always felt strange to him, and gliding over the bright slivery streets of Defom and even to the Western Border Cliffs all the way across Gwij. Even gliding to the next cloud-grazer would now never be possible.

Zyan looked up again, there were twice as many gliding men and women as just a couple minutes ago. Where did they all come from? He could barely focus through the tears. “My parents tell me nothing of you; of us. Why?” He almost shouted hoping one of his intact kin would answer back. “How dare they do this to me! Just because they had it done to them, doesn’t mean I had to have who I am cut away!” His tears disappeared, replaced with piercing almost painful angry dryness. He turned his head toward the west. The lights of the vast city were almost blinding. They were giving him a headache. He had to focus on the comforting light-less rugged monolithic cliffs. Much better.

Just as he turned back to the comforting dim of his never-been home, he felt a gentle push of air against the side of his face. It felt good, but Zyan did not want to turn to face the gentle gust. He had a feeling it was not just wind. There was mass to it.

“I watching you for couple nights be sad.” The invisible voice was soft but confident.

Zyan slowly turned to face the welcoming voice. His eyes widened to allow enough of the city lights to illuminate who he was looking at. “Are you a Kados?” He could not see the magical membrane connecting arms and torso since the being was now standing with arms to the sides like a city-dweller.

The tall figure walked closer and spread their arms, blocking out the city lights to the north. “Yes, I am what below-people call Kados. Same as you. Name is Kuresur.”

Zyan noticed that it was difficult for him or her, he was not quite sure yet, to speak Gitot-ij. He also realized that this shadow did not include him with ‘the below-people’. It sounded correct.

“It is O.K., Jyamir, I not give pain to you.”

“I’m sorry,” Zyan said now angry at himself for looking so scared. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I am not scared, just surprised. I never saw a Kados so close, let alone talk with one.” He did not want to use that name anymore and felt ashamed that he did not know what they called themselves.

“I am as wondering as you, jyam… new friend. I hear your question, and I think it good to know more about you and me.”

“Thank you Kuresur. I’m sorry I do not speak your language. I hope to one day.”

“I can learn it you if want.” Kuresur walked closer revealing more to Zyan.

Zyan saw Kuresur’s burning yellow-orange eyes. They looked like they could burn metal. “I’m sorry, my name is Zyan.” He could tell Kuresur was a female.

“Ahh, Zyyyaan.” Kuresur rolled the name off her tongue. “It is Kados name almost.”

“It is? I didn’t know.” Again, anger toward his parents began to subside just a little.

“Zyanirl, is the Kados say,” Kuresur added. “Do no anger with parent, Zyan, they give you Kados name.”

Zyan simply smiled. “What should I use instead of ‘Kados’ for you…us?”

“We are Neku, jyamir.”

Zyan repeated it, “Neku.” He decided he would keep his new friendship secret, for now. He knew his ashamed parents would not approve.

“I go. I have parent too,” Kuresur said smiling showing her two sharp lower front teeth. Zyan thought they were beautiful but realized that his must have been filed down when he was a baby or, since his father was half Neku, had not been born with them.

Can we meet again, Kuresur?” Zyan was anxious to hear her reply.

“Doiri. Of course. This was first teaching; for both us.” She smiled again then jumped over the ledge.

Zyan gasped in fear, then saw her lifted by the current disappearing into the dim cloak of the cliffs. Tears started to roll down his cheeks. Belonging tears.

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

The essays I write are not meant to be academic, i.e., they are not thoroughly researched. They are simply my expanded thoughts: correct, incorrect, or divergent. I have probably thought of or read something and decided to go off on a tangent with my own interpretations.

Andrei, a gung-ho and tsar-worshipping soldier in the Russian army fighting Napoleon’s imperial onslaught, is in the midst of the Battle of Austerlitz and seriously wounded, believing he’s going to die. The battle continues to rage all around him. He lies in the mud and blood of the war staring up into the expansive blue sky when everything goes quiet. The battle is completely ignored by Andrei as well as the narrative camera. Andrei’s and the reader’s views are taken up by this sky and the sublime divine, this sublime quieting. Everything he has ever wanted--glory from war, recognition from his hero Tsar Alexander--has become meaningless. He is part of something much, much bigger and more important.

Ever since reading War and Peace by Tolstoy, within which the above scene takes place, I’ve been fascinated by Tolstoy’s depictions of the death and near-death experiences he has his characters go through. These scenes take place either in the chaos of battle (the “war” in War and Peace) or quietly on a deathbed at the last moments of life and first of death as elegant balls and soirées dazzle throughout St. Petersburg or Moscow (the “peace”). Such scenes are the most beautiful and, within my weird-fiction mind, terrifying moments of the expansive novel. This beautiful terror is what I call the sublime quieting.

I try to learn as much as I can from the masters and mavens of classic literature so I can apply their wisdom to my UrbanWeird fiction. I often go down a literary-theory rabbit hole and bathe in the terminology various theorist invent for the techniques of these pioneering authors. Sometimes there is no term for what I took from as classic, so I make up my own. This is the case with sublime quieting. There may be a more official term for what Andrei and a few others experience in War and Peace, but I have not come across anything specific. Maybe the closest is Aristotle’s concepts of peripeteia and anagnorisis (from his work Poetics), when a character undergoes a change from a state of ignorance to that of understanding (anagnorisis) after a reversal of their current situation (peripeteia). However, there is something bigger, something beyond the character’s self, the sublime (There is a useful list of literary terminology for those wanting to go down your own rabbit hole: The Transcendent Art of Language - A Tale.)

Similar to Aristotle’s above concepts, the character experiencing sublime quieting must first have a narrow view of the world or blindly pursuing a misguided goal. They think they knew what they wanted but didn’t know what they needed. These wants and needs very often don’t align, often in total conflict. Without this incongruity, the sublime quieting has nothing to latch onto when the character is confronted with an extreme reversal of situation.

Another criterion is the quieting. The chaos surrounding the character, either externally or internally, that leads to a life-/death-defining moment must at some point be ignored by the character and reader. The character is pulled up and away from the horrors of the physical ‘real’ world. Then, quiet. The quieting allows for the sublimity of nature/the universe to enter and show them that all that is ‘down there’ or ‘behind them’ is insignificant; that what they have needed all this time is now in front of them.

Tolstoy’s Austerlitz scene takes the form of a type of Christian divine. Tolstoy’s sublime is God or at the literal least, the expansive blue sky representing this type of divine. It is portrayed as being a positive. You now know something divine that no one still anchored to the material world has any idea about. You are now in on the gigantic universal secret of pure and real existence. However, sublime quieting in my not-so-divine writing, is of course weird with a bit of terror of the cosmic horror kind. With the sublime, this is not so much a stretch.

We use ‘sublime’ today as meaning something awe-inspiringly beautiful. However, it has a darker dimension: a cosmic horror. Imagine you are standing looking out and up at grandiose mountain peaks. Yes, they are awe-inspiringly beautiful but accompanied with that creeping sense of total insignificance. You mean nothing to those peaks. It could routinely shed its gravelly, boulder-pocked skin and crush you without a quantum spark of care. The sublime is something so gargantuan that you feel and ultimately are completely insignificant. Instead of the external happenings around you becoming insignificant, what if it turns out that you are too? What is staring down at you is incomprehensibly malignant (horrific) or worse psyche-massacring indifferent (terrifying) and staring past you. Thus, the sublime quieting is the ultimate horror/terror for us self-important humans.

The next time you are tempted to pick up a weird, dark piece of fiction, pick up a non-horror classic instead. The horror and terror may be hidden but still lurking since they are integral to the human condition, the favorite focus of literary classics. They may have their own interesting lessons to teach us on the weird.

Other Essays

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thive

Conspiracy of False Citizens

<- Episode 18

Episode List

YUUKI STARED AT THE steps worn by centuries of bare feet twisting down to that fateful abyss of the root cellar. He was finally leaving. He hadn’t much problem finding his way this time. Horrific memories make effective maps.

He took out a gleamer stick, shaking it vigorously to expose the immediate portion of his descent. In too much or too little time, he found himself at the cellar door. Images of Ryudasu flooded him, refusing to retreat. What if she was still waiting for her gullible feast Paralyzing fear spread the numbness of his feet up into his legs. He could still hear the sucking and slurping of her feeding and the raspy, hungry growl. He started wiping phantom web from his body.

He took a deep breath, thinking it would give him extra strength and spoke with as much force as he could muster, “You are not going to stop me from leaving, you Retribution’s demon!” He barged through the door ready to punch whatever was waiting. His flailing fists met no resistance until he slammed one into a slab of wall. The dope of adrenaline masked any pain. He looked around frantically, his breathing heavy and short. He kept his gleamer stick at arm’s length, trying to illuminate the stubborn dark. His breathing slowed. “She is not here. She is not here.” The gloom deadened the trust in his senses. He expected the deadly Aku to jump out hissing and drooling venom. He took a few more deep breaths to calm the churning chaos in his gut and moved closer to the center, seeing the black on black of the hole Ryudasu showed him yesterday. It was not a dream.

He cleared away the whispery crackling ‘normal’ cobwebs and stuck the yellow gleamer into the hole. The entrance was not much bigger than him, the innards jagged.

Yuuki entered, struggling to find a crawling rhythm. His bulk just fit in the toothy maw. The meter of sight the gleamer reluctantly provided would not give him much warning if any thing or one should surprise him.

His face was soon shrouded in ancient webs, delicate death traps, long abandoned by their hunter owners. The smell of long-ago rotted dead things combined with wet dust was overpowering.

He had no idea how long the escape route was or if it even was one. There might be a dead end crammed full of corpses in various states of decay; buried for eternity, his being the freshest. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to clear his head chanting in whispering echo; “Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.” He didn’t know what it meant; none of his elders knew either. It wasn’t long before the thought of fellow victims in various states of decay ahead disappeared. He continued his crawl toward hoped for freedom or at least survival.

***

Every centimeter gained felt like an hour. It must have been at least a few hours since being voluntarily consumed by stone. Every scrape against rock clawed at the nerves along his spine. Forever stone walls and dark corridors mapped themselves onto his grey matter. He remembered that first drop of Amedo’s ink and what freedom might look like. “What are you, Hinodé? Will we get along?”

He had finally reached a pile of large rocks blocking his way. Was it the end of this world-piercing tunnel? Cautious optimism that Ryudasu had spoken the truth tingled his fingertips as he touched those boulders. He stretched his gleamer stick further in front to get a better idea of how massive the rocks were. “It does not look that bad.” The only option was to roll the rocks along him then let his feet do the rest to put them behind him. A bloom of fright squeezed sweat out of every pore. He was about the block the only way back.

A faint voice came out of nowhere, stopping Yuuki in mid dig. “What are you on about?”

“Who is there?” His mental survival skills kicked in, convincing him that the voice was just in his head. No response. He continued his work and grabbed the next rock.

“It’s me who said that. Who else could it have been?” The voice was barely audible but equally the loudest besides the mineral collisions of rock against rock.

Yuuki dropped a rock beside his belly. “Who and what are you?” Any being could be sentient and with voice.

“First answer my question, then I’ll answer yours. It is only common courtesy,” said the voice.

Yuuki deduced it probably wasn’t a Reincarnate due to its strange, lazy way of speaking. “I was wondering what the place looked like on the other side of these stones. Now, who are you?”

“Very well. I don’t quite understand your answer, but you did answer it,” said the presumptuous voice. “I am … well, I honestly don’t know who or even what I am.”

He was technically still in the cloister. Yuuki tried to reason away the possibility of encountering an Inanimate inside the safety of the barrier walls. He was almost sure this non-corporeal voice was outside his head. “Where are you?”

“Well, from the feel of it, I believe on you.”

Yuuki jolted, feeling undulating voracious maggots covering him. He scraped his arms and ankles against the rough rock, banging his head on the tunnel ceiling. He ran his gleamer along his body. Thousands of tiny sparkling shards of minerals covered him, turning him into the lifeless black between stars.

“I’m sorry, I cannot be specific. I am just … here.”

The sudden moving about and strain of crawling and digging were taking over. He laid his head down on a less painfully jagged patch of rock and closed his eyes. He no longer cared there was a voice other than his speaking to him.

He unwoke finding himself in a busy, roofless corridor. It was similar to the one he experienced with Ryudasu after ingesting the ink for the first time. There were, however, significant differences. Fumes of metalo-organic fermentation assaulted his senses. The bottlenecked corridor was populated with strange, wheeled machines half alive or half dead. He thought he could hear moaning as they lugubriously crept past. He looked up as far as his eyes could go before rolling back inside his brain trying to find some clue, some name of where he was. He couldn’t move any other body part but his heart trying to pump its way out of its bone and muscle womb. His field of vision filled with menacing wall-like structures. People were going in and coming out at their bases. The slender walls went high into the sky, almost as high as the barrier walls. But they were not made of massive blocks of stone as far as he could tell. They were shiny with intricate angles and designs. He smiled, finally connecting the similar ink-induced vision he’d had back in the root cellar. Was he out? Did he finally escape?

The next moment—he couldn’t tell if it was minutes, hours, or days, but it was a definite shift—he was looking up at a large face and moving, more like flying. The face was of a woman smiling down at him but also crying. Yuuki couldn’t speak; he could barely think. There was no awe, only passive observation. The woman was saying something, but he couldn’t understand. He was flying faster, bouncing up and down with the wind. She was now looking past him. More tears.

Another shift. Back to where he started. He was no longer flying but standing in that roofless corridor. He focused on an entrance on the other side, but the busy goings-on prevented him from having a clear view. Overstimulation became real pain. He wanted to lie down, but weirdly knew he was already doing that someplace else. He wanted another shift to come so he could at least have the sense of flying with the crying woman; the experience of overwhelming history.

From the gaps in the packed corridor, he saw a woman leave the entrance. He knew, how he hadn’t a clue, she was the same woman who had been crying and flying with him. He tried moving. Couldn’t. He tried covering his nose to prevent the bio-mechanical stench from invading his unaccustomed senses. Couldn’t. He wanted to cry out. Couldn’t. He could only follow the woman with his eyes as she walked, almost running, down the bustling corridor. He shifted them back up toward the high windowed wall shards, particularly the one from which the woman exited. He could not reach his eyes up to the structure’s clouded apex. The shard was a moody yellowing white that almost glowed. Strange stone. Its facade was a weave of silvery beams. It looked to Yuuki as if the mesh was somehow keeping the guts of the massive wall from overflowing out and down upon the unsuspecting people scurrying about on the corridor floor. Was it also breathing like the strange machines rolling and lumbering along in front of him?

He darted his eyes, trying to focus on whatever details he could commit to memory; battered signage, rancid smells of what he guessed were from those creature machines, and magnificent, glowing stone wall shards where people seemed to live within.

Each entrance, including the woman’s, had a large teardrop-shaped insignia above the doorway outlined in black. It looked like a drop of ink. More ink? But not completely black. Something was written inside. He held his breath, hoping it would give him the needed focus. It didn’t.

People continued walking directly in front and behind him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they could walk through him. “Why am I here!” he yelled as hard as he could, straining his throat. There was no voice to his scream.

Voice. The voice. Tunnel. Dejection’s weight forced all the air out of his lungs in one large invisible squeeze. What had the voice done to him? Was it helping or deceiving him, or simply a nonsensical scene deep in his exhaustive slumber? Relentless daggers of ink hunger stabbed from inside his stomach. Maybe he had reached a critical mass of Amedo’s ink.

Everything went darker than dark. He gasped as if he was drowning in Amedo’s pool then coughed out wet mildewy tunnel air. “I am awake.” His stomach ripped in two, one half in relief the other disappointment. “Are you there?” He waited for a few seconds. No response. “Please, I cannot be going insane. Not now.” Only silence interrupted by the quiet of his breathing.

He used the power of the dream or vision to get into a rhythm of digging himself out of the wall. The need to enter the home he never knew pushed him to ignore his body’s need for rest and mind’s desperation for sanity. As he moved the next rock, which looked the same as the hundreds before it, his tiring lungs shocked into long intakes of dry, oxygen-rich air. He grabbed the remaining rocks, almost throwing them at his feet. He didn’t care if his fingers were being worked to nubs. “Thank you, Ryudasu. Thank you!”

Yuuki tugged on a rock. Heavier than the last few. He used both numb hands to finally loosen it from its probably centuries-old position. In its place came a rush of more of that rough dry air infused with the same bio-mechanic odor as in his dream/vision. He convulsed into a fit of coughing and gasping. It felt good. Dim artificial light rushed in, spotlighting his face. He wasted no time and stuck his head through the hole not much bigger than his head to get a better look into his new world.

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

I have come to the following solidified realization. Well, I knew this pretty much from the start. Substack, this newsletter’s platform, is not really geared toward long-form fiction, even in shorter serialized chunks. This is not a negative, it is just the way Substack is structured. Non-fiction and maybe micro/flash fiction do much better. I even see that in my own reading habits on the platform. I see myself reading much more essays and very short fiction/poetry.

I will be continuing with this newsletter but not with my serialized novels. They are both on season breaks (Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive (FWWT) will have it’s season finale on Aug. 16/17th). I have been posting FWWT on Royal Road, which is specifically for the serialized novel format, though more for LitRPG - which I don’t know anything about. However, I think more and more non-gaming/anime-based authors are finding that platform, especially those of us on Substack, so there might be a home for us yet. It is free to read there as it has been here. So, if you have been reading FWWT through this newsletter, then you can continue over on Royal Road and follow me there. I will eventually put up Conspiracy of False Citizens (CFC) there, but I will wait a bit until I get more chapters written; Royal Road readers seem to demand much higher frequency of posting than here, thus need much more content ready to post.

So, what will I be doing for this newsletter? I will be writing more essays on writing/literature/literary concepts/art.... I quite like writing essays and believe will help in my fiction writing as well as perhaps get more eyes on my writing and me in general. I may also keep posting my Gwij microfiction/lore here since they do not depend on the CFC storyline at all plus other short fiction/occasional poetry.

Along with my and ’s Urban Writing Haus creative writing studios, I am also starting up my author coaching business called Story Kraken for weird/speculative/grimdark… authors. As of writing this piece, the site is still in flux, but you can get the gist of what I am about and offering. Therefore, I plan on writing essays on my “author who is also in the trenches” coaching style as well as updates and side projects regarding Urban Writing Haus.

I will keep the episodes I have already posted of FWWT and CFC here on Substack for those who want to catch up. These episodes are are also going up on Royal Road (they may be numbered differently because Royal Road readers also seem to tolerate longer chapters, where here I had to split a couple into shorter episodes).

Thus, pleas bear with me as I revamp and rethink this space. I still plan on posting every Sunday night/Monday morning, but will just be different content from what I have been posting.

Other Essays

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thive

Conspiracy of False Citizens

This is a bit different from my usual newsletter. I sat down with my Urban Writing Haus partner, , to ask her some questions about her writing life past, present, and future and what inspires her creative writing studios for Urban Writing Haus. We interviewed each other (her interview of me will be posted on her “Tokyo Notebook” newsletter). We chose a cool café, Dogberry, in the cool Tokyo neighborhood of Koenji on a very not-so cool August day.

Brian: So Joy, first question.

Joy: Yes.

Brian: Do you recall a first memory regarding poetry?

Joy: Yes. My mother was taking an adult education course at the local university. She had this book called 20th Century Poetry and Poetics, and I was about 10 years old at this time. I read a bunch of the stuff in it. Most of it flew over my head, including Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

I did not understand a word of that poem, but I read the whole thing. I recognized that it was something I needed access to, but knew I didn’t have access yet. Later on, when I was in university, I read the poem again, and it changed the course of my writing life.

Brian: It’s always interesting how we can enjoy something or know it is touching us in some way, but we don’t really understand it. Were there any others?

Joy: There was a poem by Sylvia Plath in it called Daddy, which was really great. It’s got a line in it that I just quoted to my husband last night... which is this: “Every woman adores a fascist.” She was a beautiful performance poet. She has a very deep, sardonic voice.

Brian: Oh, you could listen to her?

Joy: She has some recordings, yeah.

Brian: What would you say your style of writing is?

Joy: It’s a mix, but there’s definitely mystical elements. There’s a strong interest in Gnosticism. There’s a kind of a bastardized religious tinge to it—based on my upbringing—Magic realism, and the sense that nothing is what it seems. Like we’re ordinary people living in an extraordinary world. Eroticism plays a key role. Sometimes edgy, sometimes numb. Darkly humorous? A professor years ago told me I had a playful way of writing about pain.

Brian: Your poetry also has urban overtones. Could you tell us why that is?

Joy: I grew up in extreme isolation on a mountain in the Canadian wilderness. It was a lonely, un-stimulating childhood in many respects. I longed to host salons in Paris. I never felt comfortable in mountains and the wilderness. So, as soon as I could, I moved to a city when I was 17. A few years after that, I moved to this megatropolis of Tokyo. The city and the urban landscape have always made me feel safe. It’s the opposite of the wilderness. There’s people here. People are safety. And I don’t even have to talk to them. I just have to know that they’re here, and that gives me a sense of security. I don’t like feeling alone. And sometimes I wanna be alone in a crowd. You know?

Brian: That’s exactly how I feel. Rural scares the shit out of me. I wanted to get out as soon as I could. Nothing bad happened, just a feeling.

Joy: It’s so pretty, but just for a weekend or afternoon.

Brian: That’s more than enough. The next question is an easy one. Who are your favorite poets or writers in general?

Joy: Good question. Well, the two I mentioned. Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath would be my two favorite poets. I also really admire Sylvia Plath’s fiction. The Bell Jar is one of the great novels of the 20th century, in my opinion.

I was really influenced by the Beats—Allen Ginsberg as I mentioned, and particularly Jack Kerouac. A reviewer once described my poetry as having a “neo-beat sensibility”, and I treasure that! Anais Nin, a fantastic diarist and a writer of smutty erotica at times to pay the bills, is an influence, too. I really love the psychological femininity she brings to her craft because she was writing in the 1940s and 50s, at a time when this really masculine, Hemingway-dominated style was in vogue — perplexingly, I also really adore Hemingway — but Nin, she was this beautiful, petite, makeup-obsessed woman writing deep insights about fractured femininity and sophisticated sexuality. A true iconoclast.

Brian: If you could meet a writer, who would that be? Would it be one of the ones you just mentioned like Plath or Nin?

Joy: Dead or alive?

Brian: Either.

Joy: I would meet Albert Camus because I find him extremely sexy, and I admire his books, especially The Plague. He also was writing in that time when feminine thought was very denigrated; very few people took it seriously.

And what I love about him is that he claimed, or one of his characters claimed, something like “I would rather have one meeting with a pretty chorus girl than ten conversations with Einstein.” I don’t know if he would’ve wanted to intellectually talk to this hypothetical woman or not, but it just seemed like such a gallant thing to say, such a non-sexist thing to say when everybody else was being so casually sexist. Plus, he’s hot.

Brian: But not an intellectual woman, huh?

Joy: He said a pretty chorus girl, it’s true... Maybe an intellectual one too?

Brian: You read physical books. So, what’s your reasoning in this era of e-books?

Joy: I always read physical books growing up, of course, then e-books became popular when I was in my late 20s. I was traveling a lot for work at the time. I was taking airplanes to Hokkaido a lot. So, I did get an e-reader then because books are heavy. But it just never clicked. I never felt like I could get immersed in the story as much through the screen.

I don’t have any axe to grind with e-books or anything like that. I wanted it to work for me. But I just felt like there was an extra layer added between me and the content. I wish it weren’t so. I’m also a collector. I have hundreds of books in my house, and I like how they look, and I like how they smell and feel.

Brian: Space is the problem for me. The ever-present problem in Tokyo. But I would love to have an old-school library-den type of room. Let’s move on to Urban Writing Haus. Could you tell us how you get the ideas for your studios?

Joy: For my first two studios, I thought of things that I was currently obsessed with, so one was mythology and the other was the conbini (convenience store). I’ve always wanted to write a whole book about conbinis.

I then took a look at my most recent book of poems and looked at the titles of all of those poems; there are about 40 titles. I looked for recurring themes and found that fragments was a theme, and self-identification was a theme, and feelings and atmosphere were themes. So, yeah. Cannibalizing my past work.

Brian: And what do you hope Urban Writing Haus will become in the near future?

Joy: That’s such a good question, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. I would like it to become a place, a cozy place that people feel welcomed at; a home away from home, a creative home. It’s called Urban Writing Haus partially for that reason. In modern society and in this megatropolis, we’re all in our separate apartments and houses, and we don’t meet up as often as we used to when we were younger. So, it’s nice to have a second home filled with creatives, and I’d love for it to morph even more into that. I think it’s got the seeds of it there now.

Brian: So, it’s fulfilling your dream of a Parisian salon.

Joy: It is!

Brian: What brought you to this megatropolis of Tokyo from Canada?

Joy: It is not an interesting story. I had finished university. I was broke, and I wanted to travel. I couldn’t travel because I was broke, so I thought I’d go teach English in another country for a year, then go to another country and teach English there for a year. So, I had a list. I was going to go to Japan first and then China and then Poland. But Japan was first, and one year extended to two, then extended to five, then to ten, then to... I just fell head-over-heels in love with Tokyo.

Brian: Let’s go a bit more micro now. Where is your happy place?

Joy: My happy place is curled up in bed with my husband on one side, my brown tortoiseshell cat at the left-side foot of the bed, and the black cat at the right-side foot of the bed. So there’s all four of us just getting cozy and chilling together, and we’re watching crime documentaries. That is my happy place.

Brian: What’s the crime documentary you’re watching now, if any, or recently?

Joy: It was called Toxic City. It’s about toxic landfill getting spread all through local neighborhoods due to negligent work practices, and a bunch of babies were being born in this small British town with horrific birth defects. It’s clear what happened and who was to blame. But for many, many years, this court case dragged on, and the city council were trying to deny it to the end.

Brian: Getting back to writing. Do you write every day?

Joy: I don’t write every day. I’ve sometimes gone through periods of my life when I do. I used to do the Morning Pages, which is a fantastic habit that everyone should try, and I am gonna get back to it.

I sometimes do rage journaling, which is where you just write everything you’re pissed off about, then it’s out of the way. A few times a year, I do writing challenges. One poem every day for January, for example—and then I write every morning, because I have to. But I often have difficulty with motivation.

The antidote is to make little challenges for myself, or ideally challenges that include others, so then we can hold each other responsible. I have a monthly poetry open-mic night that I co-host, Drunk Poets See God, and I try to write something new for that every month. So that’s my monthly deadline.

Brian: Yeah, sometimes restrictions kill creativity.

Joy: Yeah, right?

Brian: Could you tell us more about Drunk Poets See God?

Joy: It’s an incredibly eclectic, inclusive, zany type of night. It’s been going on for about 13 years, held at Bar Gar Gari in Ikenoue once a month. Anybody can perform. It’s usually poets, but we also have musicians and other performance artists. It’s an open-mic night in a general sense, but it is also a community. People have been coming there for years, and it’s a very supportive group. Nobody is judging the performances. People are there to have a good time and be entertained and to support up-and-comers. We’ve got some older people who are regulars and also some really young people who come for the first time, and some of them stick around. They find the home they’ve been looking for.

Brian: I like the eclectic vibe it promotes. I see you as primarily a poet, but do you see yourself that way? And are you writing anything in prose?

Joy: That’s a good question. I see myself primarily as a poet too because that’s what I’ve produced the most of. My two published books are poetry collections. But my love is fiction, short fiction specifically. But for years, I’ve had a lot of difficulty really staying focused on short fiction. I’m really interested in memoir. I read a lot of memoirs. So, I’d like to not necessarily write my own memoirs (yet), but maybe some nonfiction essays about my past could be interesting.

Brian: I feel that short stories, even flash fiction is having a moment. OK. Switching to something lighter. What’s your favorite color and why?

Joy: Purple, because it is royal, and magical, and mystical.

Brian: Finally, some quick-fire questions.

Joy: Okay.

Brian: Literary or genre?

Joy: Literary, of course.

Brian: Tea or coffee?

Joy: Coffee.

Brian: Earth tones or neon?

Joy: Neon.

Brian: Noise or silence?

Joy: Silence.

Brian: Okay. That finishes this interview. Thank you for your interesting responses.

Joy: Thank you so much, Brian.

Joy Waller is co-founder of Moon Hotel Press, co-host of Drunk Poets See God, editor at Tokyo Poetry Journal, and co-founder of Urban Writing Haus creative writing workshops. She is the author of poetry collections Pause :: Heartbeat and Cosmic Nervosa. She currently works as a freelance editor in Tokyo. joywaller.com

Other Essays

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thive

Conspiracy of False Citizens

<- Episode 17

Episode List

POST-DREAM BLACK BRIGHTENED TO dim wakefulness. At some point during the night, Yuuki had stripped; his body remembering the unnaturalness of clothed slumber. The morning chill tickled with shivers. He pulled the blanket up around his neck, trying to keep his body heat in.

Today I leave. It was more of a reminder to make sure he followed Ryudasu’s instructions to leave late this morning or early afternoon. But he had to leave the cell now. If he didn’t, he never would.

Against his better judgment, he tried to pierce the greedy gloom toward the calm sleep-heaving form of Shinya and listen for the musicality of his deep hums. He looked up to Hiro’s cot. The blanket was still tucked under the mattress. Where had he disappeared to?

Yuuki quietly sat up, keeping his blanket securely wrapped around him. He commanded his eyes to make out any detail, no matter how minuscule, of his sleeping cell mate. Shinya always tossed his blanket away during the night, a habit Yuuki never took for granted. He could just make out the rising, soft mound of Shinya’s woolly groin, which remained the color of profound night even after the sun had started to shine through the high window. His not quite full erection twitched with dream. The struggling light shone through the spaces between his toes, forming a halo around each. His big toe just wide enough at the tip and the neighboring toe just a few millimeters shorter. Perfection. Every few minutes, his toes would curl or splay. Yuuki watch their rhythmic dance for hours.

He needed to remember these final few moments of Shinya’s long slow dream dance. He forbade his hand from reaching down to relieve the burden of arousal. His focused had to be on making volatile memory permanent.

The morning light began it’s arduous battle with the dawn’s avarice, weakening it ever so slowly to gift Yuuki more of Shinya. His masculine down spreading over his rising and falling abdomen almost sparkled. His arms lay crossed above his head, exposing the dark hair under his arms. The dawn chill grasped at Yuuki from all angles, overcharging him with that male-male electricity he had only begun to appreciate.

He curled himself into an upright fetal position, eyes still on Shinya. I cannot risk finding out you do not love me. The kiss could have mean anything. Nothing. I am not strong enough. Yuuki’s eyes glassed with tears. Come with me. Why would you? The charged heat began to dissipate between his folded legs. Why not earlier! Your kiss is too late. I hate … He buried his head to muffle his sobs. I cannot hate you.

He breathed in the unsympathetic air and wiped his tears on the blanket. He couldn’t be like this, not now. He was finally getting out and would not let his heart or cock deter him from his escape. He resurfaced from the blanket and quietly stood up. He pulled out the kimono he chose the night before from underneath his cot and slowly dressed. He stuck out his right arm to give his sleeve maximum hang and put items he thought he would need for the first few days in the inner pocket.

He pick up the vessel with the tar. A shard of the young light reflected off it, making the substance temporarily white. Is it even worth taking anymore? But the non-taste tasted too good. He placed the one drop on his tongue. A minuet of euphoria. One more. His ruptured cheek to pulse and scratch. Only one drop, then.

He was ready but sat back down on the cot and looked over to the only person he had ever loved, even if it was for less than a day. A burst of shame of allowing the black deliciousness distract him. He sat there for several minutes, fighting the only thought that crept in uninvited. I need to feel him on my lips a second and final time.

He struggled agains the gravity of nerves and raised himself off his cot, every muscle knotted in tension. Every toe tip taking more of his breath away. Finally at Shinya’s bedside, he hovered his hand just above Shinya’s belly. The escaping body heat radiated onto his palm. He bent down and put his face close to Shinya’s. He could hear the in and out of air through his nostrils. Maybe just on the forehead. Yuuki stopped as the tiny hairs of Shinya’s eyebrow began tickling his lower lip. The magnetism of lip to brow would be too strong if he descended further. There must be more space, a lot more space, between them now. He straightened himself up and exhaled the kiss, the leaden emptiness that had replaced it almost crushing him into a fleshy disc onto the hateful stone floor. He steadied himself against the desk and made sure his kimono was securely closed. He left without looking back.

***

It took Yuuki almost an hour to reach Amedo’s cell. The artificial moonlight crept out from under the door. The cool light weirdly warmed him. He gently pushed the door open, careful not to make any sound, and hid his gleamer sticks beneath his kimono to make sure they wouldn’t give him up. He tip-toed over to the pool.

He peered down into the shimmering water looking for the white ghost lazily swimming around his home. There was no other movement than his own reflection on the water’s surface. A quiet breath escaped. He is asleep.

There was a wet crumpled piece of paper next to him on the pool’s ledge. Puddles collected in the pocked stone surrounding it. He refused to even entertain the question of how his friend could write. The words were almost illegible due to the smearing of the unset ink, his ink.

Ink. Tar.

Before thinking of what his hand was doing, he smeared his fingertip into the still fresh ink and placed a bit on his tongue. Yuuki almost let out a gasp. I have been drinking Amedo’s ink? Micro flashes of city sparkled behind his eyes, but only in ghostly electrical pulses. They vanished as soon as they exploded onto his brain. What is the connection with that monster? He had a ravenous urge to lick the note away, but the thought of cannibalizing a part of his friend provided him the power to resist—for now. He began to read the words he could barely make out.

Sa-yonara, dearest friend

The finality of the simple archaic good-bye punctured his heart. He looked over to a flat sheet of slate and piece of chalk he often used to leave Amedo notes when he came by to visit but the old squid was taking one of his frequent naps. Seeing and hearing his closest friend would just be too much, especially now knowing about the ink. The creature of shame roiled and undulated underneath his skin. Shame was like that, unpredictable and nonsensical.

Amedo will understand. He quietly picked up the slab and chalk and walked over to the door so the scrape of the writing wouldn’t wake the sleeping Reincarnate. He tip-toed back to the pool to hang the message on a special contraption he’d made many years ago. The flat face of the stone would hang parallel to the surface for the squid to easily read. Before he connected the special message to the device and swung it into position over the water, he read it to himself one last time. Flowers wilt, weeds thrive.

He remembered Amedo telling him the short profound saying, the origin of which was lost in the wisps of ancient memories, when the sense of not belonging began to stab into his mind. Since then, he never intentionally stepped on or pulled a weed from the walls or courtyards. He would also contemplate the passing life of a wilting flower for several minutes. Dying flowers and thriving weeds had much in common; plain, sometimes ugly. Weeds were much stronger and stubborn. Gently caressed the slate around the beloved and sage words. Thankfully tears made no sound.

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

Episode list

“With the kiss of existence from our maker, Bilik, we came to populate our world.” Ecclesias Hyune kissed the Corel Stone and raised it toward the windowed wall looking out onto a sliver of the slate-blue sea beyond barely visible through the dense cloudtower. “We succumbe with our love to Gwaijir, the Great Birther of The Idea and our beloved Bilik and his unfortunate twin Kado, without whom nothing could be compared.”

Hyune quietly placed the dense white stone peppered with emerald back into its case kilbit stone casing. He slowly began to turn, as he did every mid-morning for the past 64 years – the mental process of each action long dead in the monotony of routine. His long heavy robe dyed to match the moody sea did not turn along with him. He formed himself into a soft screw. He now faced the companion window wall facing northwest toward the distant northern Border Cliffs barely hiding behind the slowly dissipating Old Fog.

He corkscrewed further and looked out toward the ever-shrinking congregation standing a few steps below following his gaze and words. They are as automatic as me, he thought as he clasped his hands hidden under his oversized sleeves. So few these days. 300 at most 350.

The congregation was mainly made up of employees and residents of the mixed-use Buzan-Curan Tower. Almost every district throughout the Confederation housed a Bilik Gwij worship hall, usually the top floor of a cloud-grazer. All worship halls had to be the same; two windowed walls, one facing toward the sea and one facing the closest portion of the Border Cliffs. The dais had to be raised above the congregation, and only a simple open floor for the congregation to stand. Because of the simple and open plan, worship halls were always bright but sterile.

He continued the service. “We, Bilik’s creations, are ever thankful to you Taqessi for carving out this sacred land and protecting us from the beyond unknown.” He looked at the scattering of worshipers. They don’t even know who Taqessi is. “Face your neighbor and give grace to Bilik for gifting us companionship on this island of plentitude surrounded by a sea of danger and unknown.”

The standing crowd then turned en mass to face their neighbor. I’m in some strange automaton training facility? The crowd responded in dead unison still facing their neighbor. All mirrors looking at themselves looking at each other, “We humbly give thanks for the grace of Bilik, spawn of Gwaij.”

All those vacant eyes, Hyune looked away to avoid becoming contaminated with the same virus. He’s afraid he already had. He has been longing for his childhood home district recently. Thoughts that would never have entered his mind a couple years earlier. It was poor and often violent area, but there was life; real happening life.

Without him prompting them, the automaton crowd took it upon themselves to begin the next cog in the ceremonial routine; reciting the litany for Mosh, Gwaij’s cherished companion and their hall’s patron deity.

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 16

Episode List

“This plan is fruiting.” Cane’s tone was as wooden as its form. “Either the Aku will be released and our original plan proceeds, or the council will reject Kugai’s absurd scheme forcing questions to circulate concerning his leadership and sanity.”

Hégo leaned back with some effort, the chair straining with creaks and wobbles. He wanted to be in complete blankness and silence, but knew that would never be possible with Cane in his head. Even the bumps and dives of the walls were too much stimulation. “I was thinking I would never become Master, that I must have done something quite despicable in a previous life for the Gou-Tairei to refuse this to me.”

“There are always detours regarding that paradoxical deity. Take me, for an obvious example. Should I even be here?”

“That is more thanks to the trust we have with the Flower Guild of artisans, I was able to have you made to aid in my walking after that nasty fall, what, over 70 years ago now.” He had to quickly convince the then Master to include even artifacts made by the Flower Guild, their secular allies in Keibu-yo, on the exorcist list after realizing that his walking aid was an Inanimate. This was not only to safeguard the Order from total infestation but also prevent anyone else from having the same opportunity for power and longevity. There was also the obvious incompatibility between Inanimates that would be impossible to evade.

“I will be approaching my seventy-eighth year of existence,” said Cane. “We will soon be more powerful than any previous Master of the Cloister.”

Hégo looked at the flower-embossed stick. “Yes, and do not forget that until then, I can just throw you into the fires of one of the kitchen ovens. You will not be able to help anyone, especially yourself. Just remember that when you become a utili-god.” No Wamono quite understood why the ambivalent Gou-Tairei through inaction allowed potentially dangerous objects to have the opportunity to become such powerful entities. Hégo’s hypothesis was that it kept the world more interesting for the Gou-Tairei to lackadaisically observe.

“And you a profit.” Agitated vibrations shivered through Hego’s spine betraying the Inanimate’s unemotional tone. “We need each other. I need to survive intact until that prescribed existence year, and you need something like me to help you become Master. Have no fear my dear friend Daiso Hégo, I will not betray you after all these decades of your protection.”

No fear. Hégo did not trust his companion as far as he could throw it, and that was not very far in his advanced years.

“May I ask you something, friend?” The slender Inanimate asked, vibrations subsiding.

“What is it?” Hégo was tiring of the hollow voice.

“Why is it you are not frightened of a Retribution attaching itself to you for who knows how many cycles in the event of a successful coup? That would certainly attract the attention of one of those punishing minions of the Gou-Tairei.”

“As you have so convincingly proven,” said Hégo, “there are always ways around the limitations of the Retribution that finds you. There is no escaping a Retribution, but there is plenty of opportunity to get or accomplish what you want with it.”

“Quite true,” said Cane, satisfied with the answer. “What is it that you do want in this life? It cannot be only becoming the Master of this inconsequential stone labyrinth.”

Hégo released another pained sigh. Too many questions. He felt that the more information the devious Inanimate had, the more it could use it against him later.

“My goal is your goal,” Cane said. “I am tied to you, for better or worse.” It sounded foreign to the old monk; something that happened outside these walls. It was a type of violation. “I have survived this long, so am destined to become more than just a walking stick. Power. All my kind, and yours, are cursed to want it. But for right now, I want to concentrate on not becoming kindling for heating your tired, brittle bones.”

“Becoming the Master of Aoheki is my most immediate goal, a step toward a more distant wish.”

“Which is?”

“Dai-Master.” It was the first time he had admitted this to anybody other than himself.

“Being the supreme leader a few thousand paranoid shut-ins is not exactly a major power play.”

Hégo didn’t appreciate the interrogation. “This community has gotten out of control with all this ‘the outside is hell’ nonsense. I still remember my experiences as a young man all those decades ago. Things could not have changed that much.” He looked up and stared at the craggy walls all around him. “I was too sensitive.”

Yes, I believe so,” said the Inanimate. It grew adept at using the only power Inanimates had over Animates - psycho vampirism. “But if you do not mind me asking—”

“I do but go ahead. I cannot stop you.”

“Why did you become a Wamono if it was not all that bad out there?”

“Because I thought so at the time. I was young and naïve enough to think that the Order would provide a utopia. It took me a while, but I found I am too ambitious to rot away as the second monk at a disgraced cloister.” His pupils dilated with the blackness of resolve. “I am not going to be overlooked anymore, Gou be damned!”

Cane encouraged this rare verbal memory dump by remaining silent, only asking questions when it thought appropriate for further mining.

Hégo continued. “I always thought it was enough to become a respected elder monk. I have accomplished that. I am the cloister disciplinarians.” He leaned forward to give his aged back a rest then sighed retrospective disappointment. His muscles stiffened at the thought of his superior’s weakness and envy of the respect Kugai had with most of the flock.

Cane found this too human need for respect was a growing theme in the monk’s aging mind. Its escape from this stony tomb was closer. “How will becoming Dai-Master help you fulfill your need?”

“I will be in control of the entire Order; seventeen cloisters and thousands of monks and nuns. They will have no choice but to respect me then.” A sliver of a smile started to form, cracking the wrinkled skin swirling into the vortex of his sunken cheeks.

“And the not so obvious reason?” Cane prodded, hoping there was something more complex than this desperate grasping for respect.

“Reform.” Hégo’s ephemeral smile disappeared and was replaced with a puckered grimace. “We need to know what is going on in Keibu-yo to re-gain the original goal of this Order before it is too late, which I fear it already might be. If I need to sacrifice my well-being in my next cycle, so be it.”

“What was this grand Wamono goal?” Cane asked, more out of curiosity than of any real manipulative concern.

“The power of the Gou-Tairei in everyone’s lives.” Hégo’s eyes widened with an excitement a dying man experiences just before death. “Even those outside these walls. We have become too isolated.” The zealousness on his face subsided and an expression of futility washed over the gnarled man. “I am afraid we no longer matter.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a larger influx of recruits under your over-reaching wings,” said the wooden aide, clearly seeing the real reason through the façade of religion.

“Unh” was Hégo’s only response.

“We should have another little chat with that Aku,” said Cane. “To make sure everything is in order.”

***

The sick and infirm made Hégo nervous. As the interim Master, he felt it his duty to come to the infirmary and show his respects to Kugai. He should’ve visited sooner, but the duties thrusted upon him over the past twelve or so hours made it almost impossible. He wanted to thank Kugai for going insane. He now had to convince the majority of eligible monks that he would be the best choice to take over permanently. The vote would be in a few days, so he had to be on his best behavior when it came to the annoyingly much loved Kugai.

The sound of his cane’s singular clomping on the stone floor echoed throughout the vast sick ward. This place is too big, he thought as he craned his neck to see it from all angles. No one needs to be pampered this much, even the ill. The former disciplinarian looked around at the lumpy beds. It didn’t take him long to find the shivering, mumbling lump that used to be his antagonist and friend. He dropped his eyes to the floor, embarrassed. He is really gone. It is only going to get worse. The slow walk to Kugai’s bed was tortuous. With every step, the steady sane ‘clomp’ ‘clomp’ of his cane seemed to encourage mumbling cackles and high-pitched, insane laughter. Hégo didn’t much like the cautious old man, but did he deserve this?

“Master-sama.” The meek voice soothed his shriek-shattered ears. The comfort would be brief knowing to whom the belonged.

“What is it Toyo Jaibu-sensei?” He turned to the infirmary’s head physician with his usual annoyed stare.

Toyo Jaibu was not very old, but old enough to vote in the all-important election that would decide the rest of Hego’s life. “Uh, well, about Master … sorry, Kugai-sensei—”

“Get on with it!” Soothing gone.

“Yes, well, he will probably not, uh, be able to hold a conversation with you. He most likely will, uh, not even recognize you.” Toyo Jaibu twisted a loose end of one of the binding ribbon crisscrossing his body. Hégo had never seen the perpetually on-edge monk not fiddling with his ribbon. The completely frayed blue-red bands of twisted thread signifying medical experts looked to Hégo what shredded flesh must look like. The doctor’s fingers were indelibly dyed the same carnal hue.

“I gather that,” responded Hégo, glancing over to the raving patient. “I am here to check up on him, not to have a philosophical debate.”

“Very well, I just wanted to, uh, prepare you.”

“Thank you, sensei.” Hégo looked back down at the doctor’s fingertips. The color of oxygen-depleted blood made him cringe. I hope to the un-caring mercy of Gou-Tairei that I never need his hands inside me. He didn’t bring his eyes back up to meet the doctor’s face, instead continuing his slow steady hobble toward his mush-brained peer. His cane didn’t get to call out two ‘clomps’ before he was stopped again by the fidgety doctor.

“Sorry, Master, but …”

“What is it now? I am quite busy and would like to get on with this so I can run this place.” Hégo did not care if he sounded angry. He was. Voters will have already taken his angry impatience into consideration.

Well, uh, Kugai-sensei, he, uh, keeps repeating apologies every few minutes. I am not sure why this is, but he seems to be apologizing for something rather horrific from, uh, the sound of his, uh, voice. Maybe you will know if it is of any importance since you know him so, uh, well.”

“What exactly does he say?” It could have something to do with the Wamono-Zentai’s decision? Hégo remained silent staring at the doctor. He was thinking about how this little mystery could help him in his bid for power.

Jaibu didn’t know when to answer his new Master’s question. The old man started at him as if he too lost his wits. “Master-sama?” Jaibu started to sweat. “Master-sama, is there something wrong? Do you need to, uh, lie down?”

“Of course not, you jittery twit!” Hégo yelled, forcing a small backward jump from the poor doctor. He continued on his way, as fast as his old legs would go. One vote lost.

“Oooh, hahaha look at the wonderful cudlefly. Spectacular!” Kugai’s bandaged face was smiling at a summertime insect he thought was right in front of his face. Blood seeped out from the wound that once housed his eye. The blood a rusty, violated brown. “Spectacular.”

As Hégo arrived at the side of Kugai’s bed, a frown killed off Kugai’s smile. “I should not be smiling. No, no, no. Not even a grin. I’ve let them in, every single one.”

Hégo recoiled at the sight of the fallen Master. Kugai’s remaining eye was opened wider than normal. Hégo thought it was a kind of overcompensation for the loss of its twin. The eye possessed an insanity independent from that whirling tempest in the man’s mind. “Every single what?” Hégo asked.

Kugai didn’t respond. He kept his gaze on something Hégo couldn’t see. His eye was beginning to tear up. “I am so sorry, so, so, so sorry.” His body convulsed into tiny tremors. His sobs morphed into chuckles, but his body maintained the same tremor rhythm. “Oohoohoohoo! Yes!” he cried out. He snapped his head sideways and stared directly at Hégo. The interim Master almost fell over with shock at the insane man’s sudden attention. Luckily, Cane reacted and situated itself to steady his human host. It took a few seconds to realize that Kugai was not really looking at him.

For the Retributions of Gou-Tairei, that imbecile doctor was right. He was prepared to see Kugai a little spaced out, but not this much. Kugai wasn’t a bad man, just misguided and a bit spineless. A simple vote of no confidence would have sufficed. What is done is done.

He reached out to touch Kugai on the shoulder but stopped in mid-reach. He would probably bite my hand or begin worshipping it, thought Hégo. He tried being vocal again. “What are you sorry about, sensei?” He tried to sound as gentle and sympathetic as possible.

For a moment, Kugai seemed to register that someone was in front of him, talking. But the glaze of dementia soon re-coated his eye. Kugai lifted a shaking hand and pointed a dried scaly finger at Hégo and yelled. “Spy!” The sound burst forced Hégo off balance again, this time falling back onto the neighboring unoccupied bed. Cane could not rectify the disequilibrium. “Get out! Get out!” Kugai kept his finger pointed at Hégo. His one pupil eclipsing the light brown of his iris. “I see your ravenous mouth parts and your other legs hidden behind that poor excuse for a disguise!” He sat up still staring at Hégo. “You cannot fool me!” Kugai finally lowered his accusing arm. His body fell into a slump. “Or … or are you here to punish me?” His voice now scared and resigned. “I am ready. I should not even be still alive for what I have done.”

Hégo remained in the same position, afraid to move. Spy? Mouth parts? What is that broken mind conjuring? He carefully looked over to Kugai. He didn’t want to make any eye contact or do anything that would threaten him. He had heard that people suffering from Goushintei dementia could physically do things that they could not when sane. He checked for any restraints tied around his wrists and ankles. None. Kugai remained slumped=, a puppet without a master. Hégo chuckled to himself. Just ranting from a mad man. He struggled to right himself on the bed and put Cane between his legs for leverage. “Come on Cane. Nothing here for us. He is not coming back anytime soon.”

Toyo Jaibu rushed over when he saw Hégo crumpled on the bed. “Master-sama! Are you alright?” He grabbed Hego’s arm with his nervous hands and tried to help him up to his feet.

“Get off me! I can get up just fine without your help.” He shook off Jaibu’s grip and tightly wrapped his knotty knuckles around the head of Cane and pushed himself up. It took a couple tries to get to where he could stand and lean on Cane. “Make sure he is well taken care for and arrange a private room for him.” Hégo took a few steps toward the silent patient but remained far enough away not to cause another outburst. “He should not be in this place.”

“Yes, Master-sama,” said the doctor. He kept his arms out ready to catch the old Master in case he had another fall.

“Put your arms down! I am not an invalid,” barked Hégo. “Make this your top priority.”

“Yes, Master-sama. I will get on with, uh, the arrangements immediately. Thank you for, uh, coming here to, uh, see him. Many of the monks are frightened of, uh, him, that this insanity is some sort of, uh, Retribution working on him for something terrible he has, uh, done.”

“Ridiculous!” Hégo had little tolerance for monks who read too much into good and bad things happening just because they happened. “He just had a very unfortunate reaction to the Goushintei. It happens. You should know that doctor.” He wasn’t sure if he said this for the doctor’s sake or his.

Kugai started to mumble. “Colors, colors, all so pretty colors. Iridescence shining the sky and walls. Oh, the walls. Such strong bones you have—”

Hégo began to stagger his way out when Kugai’s mumblings abruptly stopped. The silence caused shivers to scratch their way up his spine.

Kugai broke the silence with lucidity. “Who is Cane?”

Hego’s heart skipped several meek beats. He continued limping away, saying nothing.

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

Episode list

I thought since we are between seasons that I would publish a pronunciation and definition guide for you all in case you were wondering how things are pronounced and what they mean in this world.

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 15

Episode List

Ryudasu’s day-long blindness was finally fading into revenant sight. It had been longer than usual. She stretched her cuticulated lips, but no voice, not even a growl, came. A couple of her eyes were still not functioning. The world remained blurred. That was too long. Surprised I have not gone further into madness. She breathed a chuckle. Many masters dropped off the crumbling cliff of sanity never to return after one too many Goushintei sessions. She was already. Maybe it protected her.

Welcome vibrations from a struggling, doomed creature tying itself tighter into the lower strands of her web. Despite her semi blindness and muteness, she felt rejuvenated, different. Famished. Inescapable suffering triggered a poisonous ooze of saliva. Slow heavy drips from her fangs plopped onto the floor at an increasing rate.

Her spider instincts were relentless. It took her one leap to traverse the entire expanse of her gigantic web. She stood over her latest catch, her hind legs supporting her whole body. The death baptismal of lethal saliva coated the squirming creature. Her voice came back just at the right moment. “You are lucky. I will savor you like none other.”

She hissed out laughter, the force transmitted through the web to her victim. Her eyesight returned to normal. “This is quite a surprise, and I must say a delight.” The creature was a monk. She didn’t care who it was but guessed it was likely a curious novitiate wanting to see the monster for himself. She couldn’t make out the face. It was almost entirely shrouded in hoary webbing. She didn’t care. It had been too long since she made a meal of a human.

She would have to wait for her venom to dissolve the organs into exquisite juices. It would take at least a few hours for prey this large. It would be worth the wait. She could syphon off a rodent or two in the meantime.

The curiosity of her former human-self did want to see the monk’s face, if only to witness his expression as she stabbed her slick fangs deep into him, careful not to go all the way through and wasting any of the precious chum. As she swung down, she imagined the layers of flesh she would penetrate, the initial snap of skin, resistance of muscle, delicious crunch of bone, finally the pulpy spongy organs. Her front legs finally came down, forming a cage around the monk trying to scream through the suffocating web. Moans of ecstasy to her.

“Pleasure. The liquifying of your organs will give me pleasure. You are honored, Wamono.” The muffled screams continued. “Be prepared to be sacrificed to your real god. You are to be part of me, part of god!” Her fangs penetrated the monk. A final moan forced itself from the violated body. Ryudasu also moaned with kill rapture. She was no longer simply a monstrous spider creature. This was her first meal as a god, and the monk’s juices her first ever taste. She carefully pulled her fangs out just before they penetrated the back of her feast. The blissful suctionas the flesh around her fangs tried to fill the puncture wounds was second only to the cacophony of ruined layers upon her first impaling. She growled total satisfaction as the last centimeter of fang withdrew from both punctures.

She backed up, observing the dying mass. Her superior hearing detected the venom beginning to work. Liquefaction had never sounded so divine. She could almost sway to its musicality. “Dear monk. You are the lucky first to be incorporated into the sublime being of the Holy Spinner.”

Episode 17 ->

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

Episode list

The City has awakened.

I am writing this novel as I go; as pantsing as pantsing can get. I don’t have a completed manuscript or even much of an outline. I’ve tried outlines, but my worlds seem to be repelled by them. What you have been reading is a real-time first draft.

What does Gwij awakening as Fudan means for Season 2? I’m figuring that out alongside you. I had quite a bit of notes and scenes/exposition already written about 15 years ago for what turned out to be Season 1. These helpers are now becoming thin at this point, so I need a few weeks to get a little head start for the next season slated on 27 July.

You’ve now spent time in the Confederated metropolis of Gwij; You’ve ridden the Mesh, walked the derelict weepy alleys of Lost Beast, spied far up in the cloud-hidden summit of the Confederation Monolith, and knelt alongside Karnen on the putrefying waterfront. You may even be experiencing things about this world that I haven’t expected. Such a perspective can be useful for me going forward.

Thus, I have a few questions for you.

1. What worked (not worked) for you in Season 1?

What kept you reading? Was it the political scheming between Portinen and Yedorn? Karnen’s complicated devotion to his god? Zanit and Karnen’s tumultuous connection? The megalopolis of Gwij itself — the Mesh, fog, districts? Something else entirely?

What’s landing and what may not be?

2. What was your favorite scene or moment; what fell flat?

A piece of dialogue, single sentence or scene that got your attention? Anything that fell a bit flat?

3. Which character(s) are you most invested in? why?

When I am reading a novel, I do not necessarily need to connect with the main characters. I’m often more interested in the supposed side characters. For me, they are what give the world its character and identity. Therefore, is it the biggies of Zanit and Karnen; thus far lesser ones such as Portinen, Yedorn, Grand Council Melajri; or even those that have had cameos or been only a topic of conversation such as the yet to appear Drenjarse, the old Warrener on the train, operative Jaji? Who do you want to see of more of in Season 2, and what is it about them that holds your attention?

4. What do you want to see in Season 2?

Do you want to experience more political machinations? The religious dimension of the city-god? The religious taboo of exploring what’s beyond Gwij? Zanit and Karnen in the same room again? I can’t promise I’ll do it; the story goes where it goes. But I am genuinely curious what you’re hungry for.

5. Worldbuilding questions?

The world of Gwij is large, larger than the physical metropolis. I began creating this world about 25 years ago (in 2001). Is there anything you are confused about, curious to know more? For example, the mysterious Kados, those flyers the Warrener warned of? The mostly unknown Shikaruum Sea? What Orl’s book actually says? The geography of the Confederation prefectures? If something has been nagging at you, ask it. Answers may come as story, some info-dump documents, or as companion essays.

Drop your thoughts in the comments or reply to me directly. Every response I get will inform how I build Season 2.

Three weeks. Then we go back in.

— Brian

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 14

Episode List

Kugai Quietly shuffled into the stark Goushintei chamber to ready himself for the grueling Wamono-Zentai Conclave. A long slit ran the length of one of the wet black walls near the ceiling, chill free to enter without fear of being tamed to warmth. Coherent voice must never be uttered within the four perspiring walls.

He knelt on the frigid ground, making sure to keep the ultra-thin kimono wrapped securely around his knees before resting them on the boney stone. The special garment had to be thin to prevent the consumer of the Goushintei from dehydrating and fainting from the intense sweat excreted during the debilitating session. But pre-ingestion, he shivered, almost uncontrollably.

Kugai reached deep inside his kimono and grabbed a small vessel half filled with Amedo’s viscous ink. May the Gou-Tairei’s uncaring influence allow me to continue in this cycle. He carefully tipped the vessel so only one long, slow drop of the goo fell onto a slick stone in front of him. A difficult task with bones spasming from the chill. The stone was slightly more domed and greener than the others surrounding it. His skeletal fingers carefully rubbed the light-phobic droplet over the stone’s surface. His fingers turned white almost instantly from the stone stealing his blood heat. He took a deep breath, lifted his hands from the suddenly warmer stone, and covered his face. He licked his palms, ingesting the slick slime. It was the closest to a memory of lust. His hands started to warm, a warm deceptive to what was about to come. After only a few seconds, his body convulsed slightly in response to the psychotropic reaction of the ink and lichen, which immediately paralyzed his vocal cords. His hands latched onto his face, smothering. Convulses becoming more vigorous.

His hands finally loosened their grip, sensing oxygen desperation. Kugai was finally permitted a massive intake of air. He remained staring into nothing, as a newly blind man would do, hoping to see any shape or silhouette. If anyone were allowed into the chamber, they would be convinced they were looking at a possessed corpse.

His mind’s scenery changed from a murky moss green to swirling white and grey; a metaphor of a misty morning out in Sakura Hitostsu-en. Forms began forming out of this non-mist, slowly congealing into ones he recognized, his fellow Masters and Mavens. There was never any guarantee the psychotropic drug would work, or worse, work too well. He took comfort in knowing they were going through the same ordeal. It took months of painful trial and error to perfect the correct individual dosage. The most dangerous months any new Master or Maven would likely have to endure.

“Favored lives, Dogen Kugai-sama,” said the Dai-Master. Faces were not quite formed. The other attendees would remain cloudy half entities for the entire conference if they did not verbally participate.

“Favored lives, Dai-Master-Sama,” replied Kugai. His mental image of himself wore his official kimono, his hands tucked into the opposite sleeves in the required respectful pose.

“Are we all here?” Asked the Dai-Master. The sixteen other Masters and Mavens responded in the affirmative. “So, let us get to it, shall we?”

A collective “yes” hummed through the slowly clearing mental miasma.

“First, Dogen Kugai-sama’s proposal. Could you remind us and inform those who may not have heard what you are proposing regarding the prisoner Genkou Ryudasu?”

“Yes, Sama. Certainly.” He knew everyone was aware of what he was about to propose. The toll on his body from days of private Goushintei sessions was the price.

Kugai tried not to hate anyone, but he despised the hawkish Wamono supreme leader. His mind was sweating from nervousness in how to explain the situation in a convincing official manner. “As all of you know, the Aku Genkou Ryudasu has been incarcerated at Aoheki for the past several centuries.”

“Yes, we know all this. Get to the point. Goushintei is not easy for any of us,” interjected the Dai-Master.

“I apologize,” Kugai said, knowing it was just an excuse for Daviido to harass him. The Dai-Master obviously disagreed with his proposal. All he needed was a majority, but it was risky going against the opinions of the Dai-Master. Daviido could easily convince those who sided with him to suddenly change their minds.

“What is it you want to do with the prisoner?” Asked the soft-spoken Master of Takiheki. He was trying to help his colleague jump-start his argument.

Kugai unmasked a smile for his friend’s guiding nudge. “Thank you, Kokushi Maku-sama. You all know how terribly essential the barrier walls of our cloisters are to our survival.” Everyone, even Daviido, nodded their ghost heads, forming human smears. “Unfortunately, we do not have Reincarnates living amongst us here in Aoheki who can help maintain and repair our walls. We neither have the ravens of Takiheki.” He gave a nod toward Maku-sama. “Nor the macaques that Ametsubuheki is fortunate to have living amongst them.” Kugai gave another nod to his colleague who always positioned himself to the right of Daviido. “I believe all of you have at least one Reincarnate who can help with your walls, am I correct in this?” He knew he was. Again, all nodded, creating the vertical streaks Kugai was hoping for.

“You are convinced Genkou Ryudasu is the solution to this problem?” Asked Go Gaburielu. Kugai had heard the Ametsubuheki Master was still on the fence about his proposal.

“Yes. She is our sole hope in securing our safety. Believe me when I tell you that I thought hard over this and did not conclude lightly.”

“I surely hope not,” interrupted Daviido. “What guarantee do you have that Genkou Ryudasu will not repeat what she … he did to get him lives-imprisoned?”

It was a logical, thus expected, question. “The only guarantee that I can give you is her word.” Small grumblings came from the line of wraith avatars. He could see their heads turning to one neighbor then to the other. He imagined what the sound would be like if they were all physically together, hundreds of metallic hair beads inducing a non-meditative trance.

Daviido looked down the line of men and women on either side of him. “Need I remind you … all of you, how many innocent Wamono that demon massacred while Master of the Cloister at Aoheki?” He slowed when the naming the forever cursed cloister. “He went insane. It does not matter if he was Founder-Sama’s successor. This Aku incarnation, by the very definition, remains insane.”

Kugai was losing ground. His body back in the chamber was reacting. Perspiration rained down, disappearing onto the damp stone floor. You cannot lose this, not now. Kugai inhaled in his mind and in the barren chamber and continued his argument.

“Our walls are crumbling as we speak.” Kugai’s voice broke due to his almost shouting, surprising the others. “There are piles of rubble accumulating at the base of the wall, and I have seen cracks forming higher up. There is even one at eye level through which one can see directly through to Keibu-yo!”

“You did not tell us this during our preliminary discussions,” said the Maven of Moriheki.

“We just assumed you were requesting this out of precaution,” said Go Gaburielu.

Kugai’s internal smile freed his lungs. “I noticed that penetrating crack only a couple weeks ago.”

“This is rather convenient, and I might say unbelievable.” Daviido said. “Yes, Aoheki is the oldest cloister, but Takiheki is not much younger.” He raised what Kugai imagined was his fist and pointed it toward Kokushi Maku. “And it has had no major wall issues.” His fist remained tight. “Is this correct Kokushi Maku-sama?”

Maku responded. “Yes, but we do have the ravens to look after and repair the structures.”

“Have they reported to you any problems on their inspections?” The Dai-Master asked, hoping to prove his point.

“They have not.” Maku looked at his friend with what Kugai imagined were apologetic eyes. “But—”

“Thank you, Kokushi Maku-sama,” Daviido interrupted. “Shall we put this to a vote?”

“I am not finished.” Kugai was in bad form, but he needed to ensure the council sympathized with his predicament.

“I think we have heard all we need to hear on this matter,” Daviido bellowed.

“No, we have not.” Kugai’s rude tone was enough to have the Dai-Master call for his censure on the spot. “The fact is that the wall is in disrepair. This has nothing to do with the walls at Takiheki or any other cloister.” Kugai’s voice carried the courage of someone going past the point of no return.

“This is insolence!” Yelled the Dai-Master. “This is brazen insubordination!”

The rest of the council shifted nervously, looking at both men. Several began whispering to their neighbors.

“This is not insubordination, Dai-Master-Sama!” Kugai’s anger surprised even himself. “This is the safety of my congregation at stake.” He forced himself to stop before he said something he could not defend.

“Releasing a mass murderer in the form of a deadly unpredictable Aku to wander freely amongst them is ensuring their safety?” Daviido pounded his fist upon the council table.

Kugai knew the Wamono leader would be making quick darting glances to either side of him, watching for any negative reaction to his embarrassing outburst.

Kugai took in a calming breath, returning to humility. “Forgive me my fellow Wamono, I should not have lost control like that. I apologize. Do I wish I did not have to release Genkou Ryudasu? Of course I do. I am painfully aware of the difficulty this proposal causes.” The council members stopped their nervous whispering and shifting and listened intently to the Aoheki Master. “I think you can all agree, even you Dai-Master-Sama, that our walls are the only barriers against Keibu-yo. The only barrier against the lawlessness of the so-called civilization out there. We are the only islands of sanity in an ocean of mass-psychosis and violence.” He placed his hands into their ceremonial home within his draping sleeves. “How many of you have had more than the usual number of new recruits desperate to be let in and take the Vow of Isolation? I have seen young men come in with their clothes torn, almost insane from their terrifying experiences out there.” He looked to the left and right along the line in front of him. “I am sure we must assume the Inanimates and their host humans, arrogantly and heretically calling themselves gods and prophets, are becoming increasingly powerful. I am also sure you all agree that this assumption is more a reality.” He saw more nods. It is working. “But what we do not know is how much control the evil pairings have.”

His colleagues continued nodding in agreement. He had heard reports about the influx of novitiates; an unusual number were of middle age or older. He almost wished new adherents were not forced to take the Vow of Isolation immediately after surviving the Shisa. Simply the desire to know what was going on in Keibu-yo was a punishable offense, filling one with an unbearable guilt. Kugai was no exception. He constantly implored the Gou-Tairei to forgive him for the impure desire by cutting off small strands of his giant bloom of hair as penance. It was beginning to show.

Back in the physicality of the chamber, Kugai wound tightly into the fetal position, completely naked, and trembling in chemical fever. The soaked kimono lay in a soppy pile on the other side of the room. He continued calm and fully clothed in the hazy bubble of the Goushintei. “I am not by any means convinced that this is the best option. It is my only option, and yours. What would happen if your walls were ever breached? We would have a much bigger massacre than Genkou Ryudasu would ever be capable of. We have no idea how thoughts and ideas have regressed out there. All we can do and should do is speculate and be prepared.” Kugai looked directly at Daviido. The Dai-Master’s fist clenched, still in the same place where he’d slammed it down in embarrassed anger. “Thank you, Dai-Master-Sama. I have made my proposal and case. I am ready to follow whatever the council votes.”

Daviido finally moved. “Thank you, Dogen Kugai-sama. I open the proposal of releasing the prisoner, Genkou Ryudasu, as per Dogen Kugai-sama’s request to a vote.” The rest of the council made their final secretive discussions and showed their readiness by putting their hands in their sleeves and bowing their heads in silence. “All of those in favor of the Master of Aoheki’s proposal, show your decision.”

Kugai saw head after head raise, imagining clear eyes meeting his, showing their approval. His heart was finally freed from the fear that had been gripping it for the past few days, only to be replaced with another intensified terror.

Kugai crawled around feeling for the nearest wall to rest against to wait out the post-Goushintei sensory deprivation. He welcomed the blindness, deafness, and muteness for the first few minutes, a refuge from the assault of senses. Finding a wall was imperative to keep himself attached to the real world before terror would try its hardest to rip his sanity apart.

A hand finally caressed the welcoming damp of a wall. The only other stimulus was his heaving, sagging of his heart.

Spikes of electric paranoia combusted into his psyche. Images of crumbling walls and gaping holes assaulted his mind’s vision. “The wall!” Kugai tried to cry out, but no sound escaped his paralyzed vocal cords. He still tried to yell. “They’re coming. Killing, killing!” He pulled and yanked at his long locks harder, harder until bloody hairy clumps covered his palms. His head jerked in staccato in all directions and angles.

Kugai’s face turned slick with tears and blood. Terrifying scenes solidified and disappeared at electron speed but clear as if contemplated for hours, all coming together slowing to form a static vista of him standing in Sakura Hitotsu-en Courtyard under that solitary tree. Something coming through the wall’s wound. “Coming for me! The Outside! Coming!” He looked around to other monks strolling through the courtyard calm as a sakura blossom floating down to the ground on a friendly breeze.

He tried to grab a painfully unaware monk by the shoulders. No reaction, no substance. He was a ghost desperate for physical interaction. “We have to get out of here!” His face was so close to the blissful monk’s that his shout spittle splattered the oblivious monk’s. “You do not care? You imbecile!” He backed off and scanned the other monks’ creepily calm faces. “What is the matter with all of you?” “You cannot see what is happing right there?” He pointed toward the nearest slab of ruptured wall, spewing forth an inky torrent of tiny black insectoids.

He gave up trying to talk sense with the the comatose. “She has done something to them.” His voice was the calmest since he alone witnessed the devastating breach. He kept his eyes on the undulating currents of what he could now see were human-sized arachnids. They never seemed to get any closer, but thousands were flowing through. He heard the uniquely spidery racket of pincers clicking, clacking against the eviscerated wall.

In his corporeal form, Kugai stood naked and shivering facing the wall that, only a few minutes earlier, comforted him. His arms remained at his side instead of the sane instinct of furiously rubbing themselves to create heat and get the blood circulating. The last drops of urine slowing dripped off the tip of his shuddering, flaccid penis. The rest puddled around his feet, the only part of his body with any hint of blood flowing under the onion-thin skin.

“Get out of here! Go back to the hell from where you were spawned!” shouted the Kugai in the courtyard.

The physical Kugai still stood and stared at the unresponsive chamber wall, his mouth miming screams. He collapsed in a mass of skin and hair, his face landing in the already icy piss puddle.

The Kugai in the courtyard could only stare at the writhing wall. “I am sorry. It is all my fault.” He sobbed, convulsing. “I should not have done this to all of you. I do not deserve your forgiveness and will not accept it.” His voice was that of a simple man deeply saddened by what he had done to those in his pathetic life. “Only the Gou-Tairei has your destiny now. I can only hope you have all done enough good in this cycle and those before to return as better humans, or even more gentle beings, for you deserve that. All of you.”

His real body now shivering on the soiled floor, one half of his face in the pungent freezing pool and the other half staring unseeing at the hand in front of him.

In the courtyard, his eyes widened in terror. “No! No!”

There was no one living left, only bloodied carcasses strewn around the once tranquil courtyard. A giant arachnid wearing a freshly cleaved human face as a mask stood on its rear legs then lunged at the crazed psyche-bashed Master. Its mouth plates a topography of gore opened and closed in anticipation of a succulent meal. The blood from previous victims slowly dissolving into the spider’s rancid solution of venom and saliva.

Before he could cover his mouth and nose to block out the stench, a fang pierced his eye with murderous precision, a slurpy pop followed as it pulled out.

Kugai let out a scream that no worldly being should ever produce; the last thing he saw was a venom-drooling spider and his mangled eye stared back at him impaled on the fang’s tip.

In the chamber, Kugai’s right hand clutched a bloody jellied mush of white and hazel.

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

<- Episode 12

Episode list

Metals and thoughts twisting in millions into one.

A density of glass and stone; trillions of dark corners and lighted specks; sonorous mechanical harmonies in fugue with unnatural bio murmur shouting chronic silence.

Rapid movement—dreams as conscious moves to nowhere. Pain, intense crawls over this thing becoming but not yet here.

Hurting with no feeling. Pain. Freeing. Pain. Hungry.

First entity, second entity … third. Creators misnamed the first Gwij; no significance. Second; now? not insignificant. Third, ultimate; Fudan appropriately uttered in sporadic ecstatics.

Creators. Millions. Maddening squeals, squawks, and shrieks. Assume Gwij theirs. Parasites on Fudan, the real … I. I? Yes, I. Weak Gwij perished birthing Fudan I, matricidal.

Fudan spied disinterested. Listened, watched their feeding, fighting, sleeping, lusting, dying. Always dying. Remembering when began remembering.

Hungry interest. Swelling pain. I Starving.

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 13

Episode List

Basho Jyon’s mid-afternoon Haiku-Bassbeat sermon was about to approach its climax. The cloister’s most sought-after cleric, barely visible, in his pulpit overhang high above he congregation. When he came to personally conduct a sermon at a one of the quarters of the cloister, many living in other quarters temporally defected just to experience Basho’s psyche-altering bassbeat sermons. The visible-invisible dimensions combusting from the multi-color strobes pulsing and bouncing off the far walls and heads of the celebrants below kept the cloister celebrity in complete shadow.

The progressive, electronic beats began to fade. The chant chorus providing the necessary human guttural bass during the sermon slowly became the only sound, putting everyone far below into a uniform trance sway. The purring exhales of the monks composed the accompaniment. The abyssal masculine atmosphere prepared the inner-most recesses of the mind to receive Basho’s only utterance: the sermon. His synthetically enhanced ultra-deep bass voice matched the booming vibrations of the chorus reverberating throughout the cavernous hall and into everyone’s beat-punched psyche.

Tenth wind’s vocation…

Unfetter tenuous leaves

Ignored to live on

The chamber remained almost silent. The chorus throttled their voices to a nearly sub-sonic sustained vibration while Basho disappeared into the wall, his hypnotic vocal reverberating without vanquish. The air remained heavy with contemplation on the master cleric’s haiku, prepared just for them and never to be uttered again except perhaps by future scholars in arguing its meaning.

Yuuki didn’t care about processing Basho’s latest verbal gift. He didn’t remember much after Shinya showed him the crack in the barrier wall, but the memory of his supportive hand on his back was ultra-clear. He felt that masculine heat still. Was it all only one pathetic scene in an epic desperate dream?

He quickly shuffled out of the chamber when the bassbeat trainers weren’t looking. Sweat cascaded down his forehead and neck colliding with the cool air of the corridor. He started walking but soon fell back against the chilled, wet wall, sliding down in a fetal crouch, the unforgiving chill seeping into every pore. He put his head down between his legs and sobbed. Do I tell him I am leaving? Should I leave? The doubting questions put him into a dizzying spin.

A steamy, plumed sigh decimated by exclamation. “I will leave!” His mind instantly mutinied, wandering back to naked Shinya and the kiss. Warm lips. Swaddling breaths. His hands vice-gripped his head, trying to crush all the conflicting thoughts swirling inside. I have to talk to someone. Who would listen and not act, not judge? A small smile stretched over his face crimson with cry and chill. “Amedo.”

He pushed himself up the cold sweaty and wiped away the straggling tears. He would have to climb several small flights of stairs, navigate a few dozen right and left turns, and journey down several hundred meters of almost-forgotten hallways, but the journey would be worth it. It had been too long since he made a visit to his ancient friend.

***

“Amedo?” Yuuki called out for his friend.

A friendly gurgle erupted from the water. “Yuuki-Hana? It has been a while.” The squid fluttered his body fins to the near side of his liquid home, illuminated by only a single artificial moonlight-hued gleamer hanging above. He extended his pair of long hunting tentacles for Yuuki to touch. “Come over and let me feel you. These old eyes are not what they used to be.”

Yuuki gladly obeyed and placed his hand on the cold rubbery skin. “Good to see you, Sama.”

“Sama? What has gotten you in such a polite mood?” Nonen Amedo said, starting off the friendly banter. “Is this really Yuuki?”

Yuuki quietly chuckled. “How are you holding up?”

“Holding up?”

Yuuki rubbed the flattened end of one of the old cephalopod’s extended hunter tentacles. “Sorry. How is your health?” Yuuki bent down and rested his arms on the pool’s rim so his friend could see him better.

“Oh, as always; becoming older, slower, and hopefully wiser.” Amedo lifted a tentacle to Yuuki’s face, moistening his bandage. “Yuuki, your face. What happened? Did you find yourself in an altercation?” Amedo’s side fins fluttered and chromatophores bled grey concern.

“No, no fight. I am O.K. It is just a cut. I am pretty clumsy, as you know.” Yuuki smiled, making sure to show his friend that it was nothing. “Anyway, I am glad you are well.” Yuuki traced his finger around a stone protruding from the pool. “I wish I could be as well behaved as everyone else.”

“Another punishment? I was not always a model Wamono in my day.”

“What could you have done that was so bad?” asked Yuuki still not convinced of his confidant’s reasoning

“Punishment is not always based on actions committed in the immediate past life, Yuuki. The Gou-Tairei has no concept of time. Unfortunately, we do. Specific actions committed at any point in any lifetime can affect your present. Deeds never complete. Again, it is how you react and deal with those situations that determine your next form.” The squid dipped under the water to re-moisten his delicate skin and bobbed back up.

“So how do you explain you? How did you cycle into a Yedo-Seitai?” Yuuki was grateful for this philosophical discussion. It took his mind off his immediate worries or put them into a more manageable perspective.

“From what I can deduce, a squid is by far one of the more intelligent creatures of the Yedo world, and one of the more graceful, if I shall be so selfishly proud. It is a great honor to be a being only from the city where we all hope to end our less than infinite cycling through lives.” Amedo fluttered his fins slightly. The sound of the minute splashes echoed throughout the silent grotto. “Forgive me for rambling on, dear Yuuki. To answer or not answer your question, I do not have any idea or thinking how I cycled into what I am currently.”

Yuuki would have tuned this mini lecture out after the first minute at seminary, but Amedo made it more personal, more interesting.

“The Gou-Tairei is quite fickle. Some of us eventually remember tantalizing or worrying bits about all our past lives, which is rare in the extreme. Some do not remember anything but the memories of their present life. I have yet to—and most likely never will—comprehend this.” Amedo dipped back down under the surface then came back up to continue, squirting the excess water through his syphon.

Yuuki lapped at the water’s surface with his hand and emptied his lungs with a long sigh. “I will never understand, will I?”

“Most likely not. That is not the point of being a Wamono. So, to what do I owe this pleasure?” He hoped to get some cloister gossip. The revered Reincarnate was forced to live in seclusion from others due to his water dependence.

Yuuki looked down at this friend. The wise squid looked like a frayed piece of waterlogged tissue. He looked into the large eyes, eyes that had seen the world, maybe worlds, from countless perspectives.

Amedo dipped down again as he waited for a reply to his question. When he re-emerged, he squirted a beak-full of the clammy brine at Yuuki’s far-away expression.

“Hey!” Yuuki jumped back giggling. “What was that for?”

“Sorry, I could not resist. You were leaving me, I had to bring you back somehow.”

Yuuki couldn’t hide anything from those iridescent black eyes. When he was younger, he always believed those eyes were so black because they contained everything in the universe. He still believed it.

“Yuuki.” Amedo was starting to become concerned. “What is wrong? Please tell me. I will try to aid you.”

Yuuki smiled. “I know you will, that is why I came.” He inserted each hand into the other’s sleeve. He felt afraid to say it out loud to someone other than himself.

“I will not judge if that is what is concerning you. Did you get into trouble with Dogen Kugai-sama again?”

Yuuki laughed. “Yes.”

Amedo relaxed his tentacles, relieved that it was just the usual transgression. “What did you do to rile him this time?” Amedo enjoyed hearing the naughty adventures of the troublesome young novitiate.

“I asked about Hinodé.” Yuuki slowed down while saying the forbidden name. He winced, ready for a tirade, even from the calm squid.

“Oh.”

“That is it?” Yuuki was taken aback at his friend’s reaction. “No yelling, no earthshakes?”

“Yuuki,” Amedo said with slight disapproval, “I hope you know me better than that.”

“I am sorry. I keep forgetting you are not like the others.”

“How did you learn the name of what lies outside these walls?”

“I was asking questions about Keibu-yo,” the denial word sounded ridiculous now, “to Ren Denshu-sensei and sort of worked it out of him without him realizing it until it was too late.”

“Interesting. Ren Denshu-sensei is rather, what is it, by the book. Is that correct?”

Yuuki smiled. “You would be surprised how persistent I can be.”

“I would not. Go on. What makes this incident special?”

“The punishment. It was strange and frightening.” Yuuki fidgeted nervously. He didn’t want to bring those fresh memories back up from where he tried so hard to keep them.

“I see,” said Amedo, his chromatophores fading to a disquiet violet.

“I met Genkou Ryudasu.” Yuuki waited for another earthshake.

Amedo went almost black. “How did you come into contact with that creature?” His voice had been the most agitated Yuuki had ever heard.

Yuuki didn’t know how to react to his friend’s rare, unnerved state. “Kugai and Hégo organized it all as a punishment.” He hoped to get some answers to the questions he had about the Aku. Had she always been the same horrific beast? Was she now immortal? Are all Aku immortal?

Amedo bubbled out a sigh. “The lesion on your cheek is from her.” His normally bubbly voice was flat and matter of fact. “Why would Dogen Kugai-sama do this? Surely the punishment did not fit the crime in this instance.”

Yuuki covered the bandage with his hand and nodded. “He wanted to scare me into behaving. That is what she said.”

“You believe her, Yuuki?” Amedo’s normal moon tint was returning.

“Not really. But I believe Kugai-sama would think of that. She told me not to tell anyone about meeting her, but I had to talk to someone. The story gets much stranger.”

The Reincarnate released a a spray to clear his siphon. “I am listening.”

“Ryudasu and I … talked.”

Amedo’s flapping slowed. “Talked?” His voice a combination of confusion and fear. “I did not think she would be much of a conversationalist, only a killer.”

What Amedo was revealing made Yuuki feel that he was very lucky to be alive. “She frightened me witless but also told me a few secrets.”

“Secrets? What secrets?” Yuuki sensed intense mistrust. “I am sure they were more secrets about Keibu-yo.”

“She gave me a map of the city and showed me a way out of here.”

“How dare she!” The spraying shriek frightened Yuuki.

Yuuki mustered up the courage to continue. “I am leaving as soon as possible.” The single-minded statement took him by surprise.

“Yuuki. Please think about this. Ryudasu is an Aku. She is not to be trusted.” Amedo pleaded with his young, desperate friend. “She is not giving you all this information out of the goodness of her heart. If she still has one.” Amedo began to calm, dimming his chromatophores. “I know you want to leave the cloister and understand the reason. Please think deeply about this. You must admit there is something not right with it all.”

Yuuki made up his mind and was not going to let anyone, not even his best friend, change it. “I know she is not to be trusted. She almost killed me!” The memory of his near-death experience began to fester. “But I trust no one here. Except you.” Tears were starting to pool in his eyes.

“I am sorry, Yuuki. I did not mean to berate you. I am worried about you and what that evil creature has planned. She wants you to leave for a reason. And it is not so you can be happy.”

“But I cannot stay here any longer. I made up my mind, Amedo. I am sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Whatever happens after you leave will not be your fault. Please remember that.” Amedo returned to his sage-like demeanor and hue.

“Thank you.” Yuuki was glad his friend remained himself. But what he said frightened him. What would happen to him once he was out there, not only to his life but those yet to come? Asking those questions was as far as he dared delve. “I just need to know that you understand my thinking. Everyone else has come into this … this fortress with at least childhood memories of the outside. Why should I be punished for not having my own?”

“I understand your frustration. However, we, all of us, believe your situation is unique.” Amedo tried to calm his young friend. “We wanted only to protect you. But I see now that it has only made things worse.”

“Amedo. You are the only one who has truly listened to me over the years.” He decided not to tell him about the strange black liquid that gave him visions of another world. He didn’t even understand it. One drop. Every day. A flood of saliva inundated his mouth. Only one?

“But I was a willing participant in the policy of protecting you from such knowledge.”

“So, I have your blessing?”

“You do not need it and I do not require you receiving it. You have every right to know where you came from while in this life.”

“Thank you. It means a lot to me.” The weight of the entire cloister, barrier walls and all, had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Could you do me a favor?” Amedo asked. He reached his trembling hunter tentacle out toward Yuuki, placing it so gently on Yuuki’s hand that he could barely feel it. Only the density of concern.

“Of course,” Yuuki placed his other hand on Amedo’s tentacle to try and calm him further.

“Could you return here before you leave? I would like to say ‘good-bye’ to you.” Yuuki felt slight sob-like vibrations transmitting through his friend’s tentacle.

Yuuki tightened his grip around his friend’s rubbery skin. “Of course I will.” He leaned closer to the water. “Thank you for listening.” He let go of Amedo’s tentacle, resettled the hem of his long kimono, and walked out the faux moon-lit room.

The old Reincarnate sank himself to the bottom of his watery hospice. The few centimeters of water gave him a sense of safety and separation from the rest of the unpredictable and dangerous world above.

***

Yuuki took a shortcut he had remembered that brought him to the entrance of the Grand Atrium and its massive doors. He remembered Amedo’s explanation of doors; they should be welcoming, or at least interesting, to go through and discover the surprises, good or bad, on the other side. These menacing ones looming over him were the opposite. Intricate carvings of Inanimates covered them warning the viewer to behave or be plagued in future cycles by one or more in the service of their Retribution minders carved on the other side.

Yuuki placed a drop of Ryudasu’s liquid tar on his tongue. He waited for something to happen, to see and maybe even feel the wonderful terror of Hinodé again. Nothing. He was tempted to take another small drop to equal the initial dose. The fear of going against yet another of Ryudasu’s instructions was the only obstacle to his inexplicable desire for the mysterious substance.

He stared at Ittan-momen, a favorite of Retributions. A piece of luxurious silk flittering through the air like a gigantic gossamer butterfly. This carving had creases and wrinkles deliberately scarred into the wood to make it look depraved. Inanimates were real and infesting Keibu-yo. That’s what he had been told his whole life. The elegant fluttery Ittan-momen would either smother the unsuspecting guilty victim, ending his present life and hastening the next with its Retribution master festering within the new form or attempt to control the individual through powers Yuuki was permitted to understand.

Yuuki looked around the empty anteroom, searching for a floating piece of angry silk. He hadn’t thought too deeply about the consequences of what he was about to do in terms of his next cycle or cycles. Will this be such an offense to attract a Retribution? His cold-numbed feet began to sweat.

The temptation to remain and live a quiet life with the one he loved without the threat of an Inanimate like Ittan-momen shortening this life and cursing the next gained in strength, tearing away at his earlier resolve to leave. Can I ever become whole?

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

<- Episode 11

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Karnen bent over in silent torment, convulsing in shallow breaths. I should’ve said ‘yes’. I could’ve still kept seeing him. Asshole. He pounded the shadow-burned column cloaking him from the world. I did the right thing. Damn him! Now? After I started my new life?

Karnen stumbled toward the lift and headed up to his flat, still debating his response. He almost ran into his bedroom. His roommates barely noticed, too busy practicing their Trance Worship movements for the next day’s practice.

He plunged onto his simple bed and embraced the Sanbani-style comforter his murdered aunt made for him years ago as a present for graduating his thirdcourse of schooling, his sobbing muted by the fluffy fibers. Blurred stare. Open closet full of soft surrounded by the hard metal and concrete of his room. Inside, one half populated with his former life’s clothing, the other with varying Fudanejiy garb.

“Don’t even think about it.” His body ignored his brain’s command. It rebelled and stood, shuffled to the closet, the comforter wrapped around shoulders. He wouldn’t let go of if for the world. He reached into the pitch black back corner and blindly grasped for an old box, the feel of which he could not mistake. He took the box out and fell back into bed; his legs no longer willing to labour under the weight of their betrayal. “I’m going to regret this.” He opened the box. “All these letters, these memories. Why do I keep this box of torture?” I still love him. That’s why. Each letter a palimpsest of a life erased.

He selected a random letter and began to read. Seilyrs Day, C.Y. 309, Nyumem University. “Ketch!, not even four years ago.”

My Kar,

It’s only been a couple weeks and already miss you. I can’t wait to get back so we can have our usual drinks at Precha’s. I want to see that smile of yours when Trenshin, as always, brings you your beloved Yelsorek…

Karnen stopped reading and imagined those weekly ‘Precha Nights’. Why did that have to stop? He shuttered his eyes, squeezing out the last tears. “That RCFC! It brainwashed him.” He continued reading;

…and me with my large mug of Bryno. Always the strong stuff for me.

Kar, this university is too big. I know it is the largest in metropolis, but it is just too big. I’m not used to all this space around me. Give me the narrow chaotic lanes and alleys of the East any day! Back East, I often forgot that I’m a Westerner. But where ever I am and where ever I’m from, I will always be home with you. I love you so much, Kar; I want…

His fists tensed, tearing the letter in half. His fists crushing their halves of the letter into tight balls.

He looked out the grimy widow toward the architectural agony of Lost Beast. “Fudan! Is this who you really are? Must you feed on our grief and desperation to thrive?” He opened the window. Dust flurried on the briny breeze injecting him with the acrid smell of the city, of his god. He yelled. “I’m a whole feast! Devour me!” He slammed the window shut, releasing an angrier dust cloud. “I have to breathe more of you while you consume me.” He left the flat as quickly as he entered; tiny sparkling dust stars flowing in his wake. Zanit’s letter still crumpled in his fists.

Karnen found himself wandering, as if floating or carried by the city, through the winding, narrow alleyways of Lost Beast to its disused waterfront. The rotted docks and abandoned shacks had become his personal chapel to his city. The fetid foreground gave way to a wonderful view of the the city’s jagged heart across the Mouth. The super-high cloudtowers on ultra-wealthy Birnir Island and beyond in the Confederation power hub of Kakasum-Bigaj played a perpetual game of hide and seek with each other amongst the fogs of the day. Luckily, it was between old and new fog. It would not be long before the new fog rolled in. He had to cherish the rare minutes of an almost limitless view.

He chose a rock free of the thickest of sea slime and sat, eyes still on the pointy dermis of Fudan. “Unbelievers, most of them. Maybe all. They do not yet comprehend how alive you are.” Karnen spoke as if the god was sitting next to him pondering itself. “They are only concerned with childish games of politics and rebellion; making money and making more money…” He paused as if waiting for his god to reply. “If only they knew how simply being enhances your greatness; that we are all a part of you.” He stopped the human-to-god dialogue and listened to the city’s hum, its screech and thum-thoom lullaby of the Mesh trains as rumbled underneath never at rest only to come up for brief forays into the airy world; the mournsome blows of ships and ferries traversing Shirfa’s vast Mouth and barges plying the inland veins of canals; the quiet hummm of the sky transports crisscrossing the twilight air; and the million multitudes of whispering steps swarming into grand collective outbursts of stomps along the boulevards, streets, and alleys.

The remnants of Zanit’s letter still crushed in his fists were little more than soggy disintegrating shreds. He walked toward the greasy water, the shore’s grunge grasping at his robe’s hem, warning to not stray to close to the voracious water. “Have you feasted enough?” Palms spread, he smiled down at tiny balls of paper. “Just paper.” He let the crumpled balls fall into the murk. “A dessert.”

His legs automatically bent for kneeling as he collapsed onto the flotsam crusty sand, fingers weaved together across his stomach in the stationary pose of Fudan contemplation. He waiting only seconds before his city’s breathing gifted him dreams without time, far away from the oppressive cosmos of experience.

‘Fudan’? ‘I’? Yes. I. Hunger. Ready

Karnen’s eyes snapped open, sightless, frozen in sublimity of other awareness. The rest of him remained in slumbering slackness. Unable to speak, only listen to piercing after silence.

Interlude I -->

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 12

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Ryudasu was finalizing her weaving of a luminous death shroud around a paralyzed rodent. Its stare wide and terror aware. There was nothing for her to do but kill, feed, and think. It was what she had been doing for centuries, ample time to devise and refine her plan in minutia. It was all at last coming to fruition, thanks to that obstinate novitiate finally maturing and getting a mind of his own. Such milestones could not be celebrated. Her scheme was delicate as an aging strand of her web. Any breathy wind could make the whole thing snap then collapse. There will be curves and bends, but no deviations. Not this close.

Her body was as still as the sluggish musty air around her. The only sound the sticky attaching and separation of silk strands as her back legs worked like factory mechanicals to lay the final strands just right.

She carried the white sarcophagus up to the top of her web, placing it among the others in various states of readiness. Another delicious twinkling star in her night.

She took a moment to look around her prison lair. She was hyperconscious with excruciating detail every stoney crevice, every minuscule mount of dust. That impudent human’s escape into that Scorned World is key to hers out of it. Her tenuous connections beyond the barrier walls were useful only to a point. This phase required physicality and a very specific one at that. A Reincarnate could not step even one toe, paw, or daggerlike pincer onto the unconsecrated ground of Hinodé. “It is my duty to be the rampaging horror on those rancid city streets. The only means of waking every one of those souls out of their sloggish slumber corpulent with deception dreams.” She let out a sighing hiss. “I paid my past actions long ago. Centuries more than sufficient. I require compensation.”

She swung one of her legs and kicked an emptied cocoon off the web. It quietly bounced against the wall before landing with a soft thud on the rubble below. “I will grind these walls, this world into oblivion!” Her abdomen combusted, blasting the entire cell in a hue of bile yellow-green. “And you Gou-tairei or whatever your schizophrenic personalities name themselves. No mercy!” She had to believe in its unconcerned power, she was proof it existed. “Being certain in your existence does not require devotion or respect.”

She remained at the top of her web focusing on her various capsuled meals. I will stretch my web over all the city. A limitless feast. So hungry. So, so hungry.

Ryudasu looked up at the wall to a glossy green stone standing out against its death-drab neighbors. “It is time.” She reached over to a small vessel resting on a rough ledge etched into the wall despised by time. She dipped a pincer into the thick black substance. She needed to get that old fool Hégo to acquire more for her. She sacrificed a good portion for that man-boy. She carefully withdrew the pincer and began smearing the black over the fuzzy green. The scraping of pincer against stone echoed like an over-zealous butcher sharpening well used cleavers.

Ryudasu made sure the black-green goo was well mixed. She scooped just enough for about ten minutes of mind-to-mind communication and began to carefully lick the bitter grease. In its unadulterated form, the ink was highly dangerous. Her present form was evidence of and punishment for that little experiment. Petty, Gou-Tairei. Very petty.

The familiar numbing silence pulsed her brain. Her abdomen dimmed. The quiet broke with a sudden and audible snap in her highly tensed synapses, throwing her into a spasm, spawning wave after wave of vibrations along her web. Her abdomen burst again in yellow-green light, so bright everything unshadowed. Low gurgling welled up within her, eventually escaping her flailing armored mouth. Her brain no longer aware of, even cared, what was happening to her body.

Like all times previously, all she could see at first was haze. She imagined herself standing on the precipice of the barrier walls, the permanent mist disappearing everything in its chilled indifference. The preferred scene kept her orientated. A slightly darker form began to materialize in the murky distance. It wouldn’t become any more detailed until it started conversing with her. She never had the patience to wait for the form to initiate. She needed to know who she was going to talk with: to make sure it was who she expected.

“You made it on time this session,” Ryudasu began.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting during our previous session, Holy Spinner,” the form replied. Ryudasu detected her genuflecting.

A female voice. Good so far. The form began to give away more detail. “Keep talking. I need to see as much as I can of you to make sure. There could be people out there jealous of your relationship with me.”

“Yes, of course, Holy Spinner,” replied the female form. “Is the time almost upon us?”

“It is, my little silk strand.” She detested acting gracious and divine. True gods are never gracious. She wanted to encase this ignorant devotee in a sticky shroud and suck her dry, alive.

The woman was finally differentiating from the haze around her. She would never clarify, a limitation of the Goushintei. Ryudasu could make out something on the head of the blurry-faced apparition. “Why are you wearing that ridiculous headpiece?”

“My apologies, Holy Spinner.” The woman involuntarily reached up, touching her towering wig. “I had to officiate a group funeral of our latest actors. It went a little long, and I didn’t have time to change into less offensive attire.”

Excuses. Explanations of weak minds. “Are our converts preparing for the coming re-unification of the Infinite Dimensional Web?” She forced herself not to laugh when she spoke such nonsense. She didn’t care about any devotion or any silly grand re-unification. This little religion, built up around her was simply a happy accident thanks to the malleable religious and the more chemical than spiritual Goushintei. “What is the progress in converting the rest of your kind?”

“Forgive me, Holy Spinner, but if you could give some sign, some evidence, that you exist, I believe conversion would happen much quicker.”

Even through the Goushintei miasma, Ryudasu sensed the woman shivered with nervousness. That pleased her.

“I am not the leader of all the Fujou. I only have power within my small den. Our devotion to you must remain secret, unfortunately. The rest of the Fojou are devoted to the Tsudii, Suriidii, or both. But I do have a plan.”

She was competing with her kin for the devotion of feeble minds. “A plan?” Ryudasu was becoming bored but needed to express divine patience. “Does it have something to do with your reforms?”

“In a way,” said the Fujou Dame. “It may not be possible to convert the entire Fujou gunshyu, but I could put into motion a break-away. Perhaps ally with other independent women from other all-female gunshyu. I’m meeting one tomorrow.”

“I chose you, like your father before you, to spread my word. Unfortunately, he passed away before he had time to make any significant progress within his circles. It is up to you. Faith is all you should need.” From the beginning of this accident of a religion, Ryudasu knew an army of fanatic drones would only be beneficial. “The time will come very soon when I will be able to give you and others a sign. This is why what I am about to ask you is of extreme importance.”

“Anything, Holy Spinner.”

Ryudasu imagined illuminating her abdomen slightly for effect. “I want you to meet a young man outside the walls of the Wamono cloister of Aoheki. You will see him at the spot I guided you to several months ago, remember?”

“The place where the stones are a little out of place, not too far from where I receive the gift of the Vision Dew every few months.”

“Yes.” Ridiculous name. “He is a Wamono novitiate monk named Yuuki-Hana and will be exiting most likely tomorrow evening. He has no idea who I am or our holy plan. He is simply a sacrificial messenger. Do not mention me or your faith. It will only confuse him, understood?”

“He is to be sacrificed? Then it will be an honorable death for him. Will I be the one to perform the sacrifice?”

Why do god believers always have more ambition to violence than the gods they worship? “No, befriend him and take him back to your den. I cannot overemphasize how important this is.” She watched her devotee for any signs of her understanding. The woman nodded. “I need to hear that you understand.” Ryudasu intensified her voice to sound more godlike.

“I understand, Holy Spinner. I will do everything in my power to accomplish our goal.”

Very different goals. “Good. This novitiate has not been outside the cloister since he was an infant. He has no knowledge of life outside those walls. He will need a friendly face to guide him for his first few days.” He needs to trust someone out there. “You must safely deliver him, with a map I have given him and the message I dictated to you during our previous meeting, to the one your father told me about, this Editor.

If her centuries of information gathering could be trusted, he and that so-called Queen Ren were her cousins in a life, a world they were deceived out of. Now complete strangers, different species. She was not pleased to find they were both compromised by Inanimates or idols as they were called out there. Some even became sort of prophets to their thing gods, and that interfered with her divine persona.

“The Editor should be able to take it 3from there.” The novitiate’s blood should be sufficiently enriched by then. “And do not allow those carnivorous females you lead to place even one of their debauched fingers on him.”

“Of course, Holy Spinner.”

Ryudasu didn’t want this mindless creature knowing any more about her plans than was necessary. She only needed her to be devoted enough to do her tedious info gathering and build her religion. Becoming a god made it significantly easier to control and mold.

“I cannot guarantee exactly what time the Wamono will exit, so stay in the area throughout the day and keep watch over that portion of the wall.”

“That will not be a problem. I am due for a recruiting expedition.”

“I did not ask you if it would be a problem.” She detested when others’ sense of self-convenience. “’Recruiting’. Seems more like hunting.” Ryudasu didn’t care what those hags did: recruit, hunt, it was of no concern to her. She had to be righteously indignant about something. She wouldn’t be a god otherwise.

“Yes, I am aware of your distaste of our practice. I can only pray that recruiting will be a thing of the past.”

Rydasu was also quickly tiring. She could not show any signs of the weaknesses of mortals. “I see that the Vision Dew is starting to affect you. We will end now if you have no other questions.” Nothing much frightened her, but the aftereffects of the unpredictable psych-communication drug was something that everyone, even a fake god, had to be frightened of.

“I have no questions, Holy Spinner. I will prepare for Aoheki immediately.”

The image of the strangely coiffed woman began to meld back into the drug haze of Ryudasu’s mind, disappearing altogether within a few seconds. She would soon go temporarily blind, mute, and dangerously disorientated for several hours. Post-Gouthinei was when the mind was at its most breakable. She took strange comfort knowing that the Fujou Dame would be going through the agony at the same time. She took the few seconds afforded her after disconnection to mentally prepare for the ordeal.

Episode 14 ->

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

<- Episode 10

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Quaryn Yedorn, finally finding a patron-less bar just outside the spiky cloudtower district of Karkasum-Bigaj, took the last sip of her favorite cocktail. She needed the mini shock of bitter to revive her from the ridiculous fanfare she had just been through. Ker Portinen loved public spectacle, and she was his latest showcase. In addition to her Hud-Kership of Galoreya, she was now officially the Prime Directorate of his Anti-Terrorist Agency. Don’t know how much more of that pompous weakling I can endure.

“Would you like another audari, madame?” The barman asked her in a more polite manner than he would with his normal clientele. He could tell she was an important person by that life haughty hatred they all had in their eyes. “Is this your first time here, madame?”

“Yes and yes,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.

It took a few seconds for the barman to process what she meant. He took the curt hint and killed the attempt to make further small talk.

“Interesting name of your bar,” she said, surprising the barman.

He half smiled revealing two chipped teeth, one upper and one lower. “Thank you madame.” It is named after the legendary queen of Synn, Srehedri-jan—”

“I know who she was,” again with stabbing curtness. “Why her? Are you a Synnese?”

Her accusatory tone made him feel guilty for being someone he was not. “No … no. I just like powerful bitches,” he said trying to break her frozen exterior.

She allowed a laugh under her breath.“Me too, me too.”

The Srehedri-jan was located in on of the several destitute neighborhood attached like parasites to the power center of Karkasum-Bigaj; its existence a garish irony in the confederation stronghold of the east. The decor was ornate in honor or, to many who wandered in, dishonor of Srehedri-jan. The worshipped and despised queen leading up to the bloody years before Incorporation was known for excessive extravagance and insatiable hunger for power, traits that many believe quickened the inevitable. The color scheme of the main room was in the royally favored yellows; walls alternating between blasting yellow and a more subdued ochre with lemon yellow trimming. All who entered were greeted by the intimidating glare of a portrait of the queen handing high above the bar, angle just so so that she constantly stared down at you with unapologetic disdain.

“Are you waiting for someone, madame?” The barman sheepishly asked, trying to start some kind of conversation since it was still early and there was no one else to talk to.

He is a true barman, always needs someone to talk with to while away his useless life. “Yes I am”, again with a sharpness that substituted as physical punishment for the barman.

Yedorn took her fresh audari and walked over to an empty table as far from the bar as possible. The barman stared at her with a slight look of dejection and began wiping away at his troglodytic existence.

Before she could take the first sip, her evening’s companion entered, the buzzy yellow wall silhouetting him in bile aura. He better be up for to the task, Yedorn thinks as she tries to make out his features through the annoying interior brightness. She raised her hand to signal to him. He acknowledges with a raise of his index finger.

An oaf but loyal. Most importantly, expendable.

“Good evening Madame Hud Ker.”

“Beddekr,” her voice like a mother who could not love nor wanted to.

“Interesting choice in location, Madame.” Beddekr looked around and sneered at the decor. “I keep forgetting how quick it is to get from K.-N. to K.-B. on the Capitals Line.”

Useless small talk. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Yes, Madame.” Beddekr bowed obediently.

“What we are about to discuss will not leave your lips again.”

“Yes, Madame. I understand.” He was under no illusion that she would have him killed for the slightest offense. He had been head of her anti-rebel agency in Galoreya since its inception. He has keep his position by knowing to tread very carefully with his boss.

“Good.” She let a small turning upwards of her lips. “I need you to do something for me that is highly sensitive and dangerous.”

Beads of sweat popped out of his furrowed forehead.

“You will be handsomely rewarded of course.”

“Thank you, Madame.”

“I need you to agree before I tell you. You understand.”

“Ye-yes, of course. Anything for Madame,” Such devoted admiration sickened her. It didn’t matter. It was useful when it was directed toward her.

Of course you will. You owe me your life. “Why are you still standing? Sit.”

The bearish man instantly obeyed. The filagreed dusty-rose chair back creaked as he adjusted his bulk into it.

“I need you to get religion.”

“Excuse me, Madame?” Beddekr looked directly into Yedorn’s terribly green eyes; an action he usually tried to avoid.

“I want you to become a convert to Fudaneijy. Cathedral-Fudan in Lost Beast. You need to become a, what are those freaks called, a Da-Du-Deva?”

“A Deva? For what purpose?” He was still looking directly in her eyes. She did not like it.

“Hud Ker Drenjarse needs to be eradicated.” She stared into his eyes, forcing him to look away.

His surprise jerked his arm, knocking the vase with a garish fake flower off the table. The a-sonorous ting ting reverberated throughout the still empty bar. Yedorn looked at him in disgust.

“Remember, you have already agreed, Beddekr.” Her eyes pierced his.

“Yes, Madame. Whatever you wish. You suspect him of being affiliated with a terrorist rebel group, Madame?”

“Anybody can be a terrorist, Beddekr.” An insidious grin festered onto her face. She had never asked him to kill anyone, anyone of such importance. “You understand now why you cannot repeat any of this to anyone.”

“Of course, Madame.” He again understood what was not said.

“I made arrangements for you to join the Cathedral-Fudan in Lost Beast as an initiate immediately. You need to make it look like a rebel assassination. It doesn’t matter which piss-ant group. I had documents mocked up for you. You are from Qairyu; Shehidza district of Qem chorem. So your name will most likely be Deva Shehidza plus whatever silly number Deva you are from that area.”

Beddekr simply nodded. “Will I have time to gather some belongings and put my household in order in Galoreya?”

“No.” She snapped. “No time.” I have made arrangements for all that and not necessary. You only have time to go home and decide what you want to wear to the cathedral. I hear they take all personal possessions at the door, so anything you take with you will not be yours after you enter.”

Yedorn saw the fear tightening his jaw. He’ll go through with this. He knows what will happen if he doesn’t. “You are expected at Lost Beast first thing tomorrow morning. They only accept initiates once a week, and tomorrow is that day.

“Is there a timeline, Madame Hud Ker?” Beddekr stared down at the hillocks of dust and grime accumulating around the feet of the table.

“I will keep you informed of what I expect of you and when. Right now, just concentrate on being one of those spaced out Devas. Maybe you will snag yourself a boyfriend,” she looked at him like a starving predator. “You’d be quite popular, I’m thinking.” She knew enough of the upstart religion that he would be more successful he was same-sex attracted.

“But, Madame, I’m not—”

“You are now.” She waved him away. “I would start figuring which position you prefer. Practice a little.” She took a sip of her drink, bubbly laughter escaped the straw.

Beddekr said nothing. He knew not to belabor orders. He stood up, the chair still complaining, and went to exit the Srehedri-jan.

“Beddekr.” Yedorn’s voice arrested him in mid step. “You know failure is not an option.”

He finished his step but did not turn around. He only nodded. He disappeared as if dissolved by the digesting yellow ichor.

“Barman!” Yedorn lifted her empty so he could see from her shadowed corner. “Another. And make the bitter bite.”

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive

Essays

<- Episode 11

Episode List

Yuuki woke form sleep he didn’t remember succumbing to. He remained on his back, moving only his sleep teary eyes and wondering if all that had happened yesterday had really happened: Aku, map, vision-inducing black elixir. The grip of waking disorientation finally released him. He hesitantly touched his gouged cheek as if a new monster had been painfully born from the pincers of the Aku and attack his hand. He had been too exhausted to attend to it when he returned. Angry blood smudges and irate crusted gore clung to his pillow. It was no dream.

He didn’t want to go the infirmary. He hated that place. It was populated with beyond elderly, sick monks and more than a few demented ones.

He quietly walked over to the desk and bent to look at his reflection in the tiny grungy mirror that provided any kind of dimension to the cell. Hiro and Shinya’s cots were empty and disheveled. They must be practicing their morning bath. The mirror didn’t get much use from him, but it did from the constantly grooming Shinya, the oldest of the three cellmates. It didn’t allow for the clearest image, but it was enough to be repulsed by Ryudasu’s bloody master work.

He grabbed a corner of sheet, and ripped a couple frayed swatches. He wadded one up and dipped it in the cup of water he always kept next to his cot. It felt like the skin had morphed into these always walls. After a few passes with the wet cloth, the wound began to soften but protested with pain. He could see further inside with all the dried globules of blood clinging to torn flesh cleared away. She almost pierced though. He pushed against the laceration from the inside. His finger was almost visible through the remaining membrane: the moment he became aware of his adulthood. He thought of all the monks having scars; not all visible but psychological. Hinodé had scarred them so badly they had to escape. I need more scars.

He reached into his sleeve pocket and touched the heavy reality of the map inside. Was he truly going to leave this place? The thought allowed a smile of accomplishment, but a flush of sadness quickly cinched that smile in on itself. He was about to leave the only home he had ever known.

He listened for the heavy footsteps out in the corridor signaling his cellmates’ imminent return. The dusk’s mute dim, futile in maintaining its tenuous hold on the night, began surrendering to its willful dawn foe. Both facing imminent defeat to the cremation-grey nimbus of cloister shadow. He took out the map and unfurled it on his cot, unsuccessfully holding it flat with both hands. He carried his treasure over to the desk, clearing away the study books and chore logs of the others. He placed his yellow gleamer in its holder and unfurled the map again replacing one hand with the vial of wondrous black. Hunger saliva began gushing into his mouth. He was not even hungry. He stared at the vial, sucking in his spit before it became drool.

The map was more like a rough schematic with scribblings that were just that off to be unreadable. He stood hunched over the map for quite a while, trying to get some sort of orientation, but it was impossible; the only location he knew was the square Ryudasu had pointed to as the cloister. There was not even a direction marker.

He straightened himself and put his hand on the small of his back, massaging the kinks out. He let the map roll back into its natural state. He needed to walk away from it before it started to drive him mad, or at the very least give him a headache. It was just in time.

Shinya barged into the cell, tossing his soap, washing cloth, and drying towel onto his cot. Yuuki jumped, almost knocking over the gleamer.

“Did I scare you?”

Yuuki grunted an affirmative.

“Good!” Shinya displayed his characteristic cheeky smile. “That must have been some punishment. You were passed out when we got back from our night bath. Old Kugai is not going to like you skipping last night’s and this morning’s bassbeats.”

Shinya joined the cloister of his own will about twenty years ago when he was just barely old enough to do so. He was twelve years older than Yuuki, but Yuuki was bulkier and taller. This was Yuuki’s fifth set of cellmates, and they were just barely getting comfortable with each other’s personalities, quirks, and annoyances. Like almost everyone in the cloister, Shinya was impervious to Yuuki’s tricks and talents of getting any trifle of Keibu-yo trivia. Like all novitiates, no matter their age, Shinya had to be a barrier wall of his own. Any sign of breaking the vow to never mention his life outside meant possible trial by Shisa, a powerful deterrent. Despite Shinya’s unwillingness to share, Yuuki liked Shinya; liked him a lot.

“So, what did they have you do this time and who did you pester for what information about Keibu-yo? Is there anything left?” Shinya shook the last bit of water out of his ear. “You are lucky Kugai-sama likes you so much. You would have been sent to Shisa trial long ago, and they would not care how special you are.”

Yuuki ignored Shinya’s dig at his favored status. “There is a lot is left.”

“Woaaa! What happened to your face?”

“Nothing. Just tripped over some rubble down in the root cellar when cleaning it. It was the punishment.” His cheek burned from the attention.

“Did not know we had a root cellar.”

Yuuki regretted telling him. He was already on the verge of betraying the promise he made with that Aku.

“Where is Hiro?” Yuuki asked, changing the subject.

“Still in the baths.”

Shinya threw off his bath kimono and did a full body scan with his towel to wipe away the remaining droplets that escaped his quick dry back in the baths.

Yuuki tried to look away every time, closing his eyes tight, blaming them for not obeying. He ritually began his voyeuristic exploration—if he was positioned correctly—at the copper glitter in Shinya’s eyes hooded with broad brush-stroke eyebrows. He moved down to his broad chest and slight paunch covered in currents and eddies of wet hair, changing direction depending on how the last streams of water from the bath, or the sweat from a hard day of chores, flowed over it. His penis, nestled in a dense black; the same deep shadow black as the hair on his head, always seemed to be half erect, testicles slightly bobbing up and down to the rhythm of his breathing. His legs were uniformly covered in the same soft hair as his belly. The masculine fluff extended down to the knuckles of his perfectly rounded toes and carpeting all the way up and over the mounds of his buttocks, stopping in an alluvial fan a few centimeters up the small of his back. Yuuki had the opportunity to take the same visual voyage at least once a day. He sensed Shinya knew of his indecent ritual. He could never figure out if it was Shinya’s narcissism or an altruistic gesture?

Shinya stopped rubbing himself down with the towel, standing still, naked and affecting a frown. “What is wrong, Yu-chan? You lost interest?” He sounded half concerned.

Yuuki looked back at Shinya standing full frontal just a half a reach away, but it might as well have been that unfathomable chasm separating one’s lives. Yuuki started to give an ‘I do not know what you are talking about’ look, but it would’ve been ridiculous. He looked directly at Shinya’s glistening groin and squinted. Instant regret.

Shinya edged closer. “Is this better?”

Yuuki looked up to his smiling face. He jumped off the cot from the opposite side and sat down hard at the desk. He didn’t do anything different. What is going on?

“Come on Yu-chan,” Shinya pleaded, walking over to Yuuki still naked. “I am sorry. Just wanted to play with you a little.”

Yuuki still had his back to his nude cellmate. What does he mean by ‘play’? He felt slight pressure on his shoulder where Shinya placed his hand still warm from the baths.

“I did not mean to upset you. Just that—”

“Just that what?” Yuuki turned back to Shinya, scalding tears starting to flood his eyes.

Shinya squatted to be at Yuuki’s eye level. “Calm down Yuuki. What really is wrong?” He ran a couple fingers down Yuuki’s bandaged cheek, instantly dulling the pain.

“It was a difficult day yesterday, that is all.” Yuuki covered his reddening face. The sensation of Shinya’s hand lifting away from his shoulder and the slight breeze he made as he stood up and moved away triggered chills of cold retreat. Yuuki turned his head slightly and watched Shinya put on his kimono and start to wrap a binding ribbon around himself to close it.

Shinya exhaled a barely perceptible laugh that enveloped Yuuki’s insides in tender vibrations. “Probably more than half of us are interested in each other. A fortress of the same sex will bring that quality out in anyone.”

“Us?” Is he telling me he …?

Shinya raised his arms for a long stretch then walked to stand below the high window. “Many novitiates talk about girls they met, or in my case, imagined meeting out there. We want what we cannot have I guess is the saying.” He smiled and walked back toward Yuuki. He took Yuuki’s chin by his hand and drew his tear-streaked face to his and kissed him. He pulled back still with that smile.

“I want to show you something.” Shinya grabbed Yuuki’s hand and pulled him up out of the chair.

Yuuki only now realizing how strong Shinya really was. What?”

Shinya climbed onto the desk then helped Yuuki up. They stood in front of the lonely window. Shinya pointed into the courtyard outside. “Look”.

Yuuki didn’t care about anything out the window. He wanted to keep his attention on those eyes, suddenly different, more beautiful ones. He finally obeyed Shinya’s excited command. He didn’t have to stand on his tippy toes like Shinya.

“Sakura Hitotsu-en Courtyard, so what?” He looked out into the courtyard almost every day. The only thing he notices was the pee-yellow grass at this time of year.

“Over at that wall.” Shinya placed his wide hand against Yuuki’s lower back to make sure he was stable. It was a feather sliding down Yuuki’s back, tickling him just under the skin in the best kind of way. “If you go there and look really hard, you can see a small crack. It goes all the way through.” Yuuki squinted to see if he could see the small miraculous portal to the outside world.”

“Why did not you tell me this before?”

“I only discovered it a couple days ago. I was waiting for the right time to tell you when we were alone.”

“Can you see anything on the other side?” Yuuki squinted, trying his hardest to see the impossible.

“Not much, a tiny bit. I only tried once and only for a second. There were others around.” Shinya’s hand remained on Yuuki, contracting minutely but enough to send this tickles further throughout his body.

At that instant, Yuuki found how love felt.

Episode 13 ->

Conspiracy of False Citizens

Essays

The essays I write are not meant to be academic, i.e., they are not thoroughly researched. They are simply my expanded thoughts: correct, incorrect, or divergent. I have probably thought of or read something and decided to go off on a tangent with my own interpretations.

The City’s weeping muck scratches down Its scabby cement hide vivisected into surgical threes; the no-face neglects Its ecstatic terror of being.

I’ve been fascinated with making the mundane weird for several years, ever since I began photographing and writing seriously, but more so recently while developing the Writing the City creative writing workshops with my friend here in Tokyo. I decided to create a workshop titled “Weirding the Urban Mundane”, and in the process I discovered more about the various concepts around that topic. So much so, that I felt the urge to write this essay.

I came across two opposing but not exclusive literary viewpoints (devices/strategies/concepts? I’ll stick with viewpoints) that can be applied to make the mundane weird in literature and art in general: contextualist and formalist. these are very general literary viewpoints but can be easily applied to the device of defamiliarizing (I prefer ‘weirding’).

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Weirding something mundane through the contextualist viewpoint involves our (the author’s and reader’s) experiences, i.e., our mental baggage stuffed full by the events of the real world, that inform our imaginations. This is probably the most common and least challenging viewpoint to apply the weirding device for authors and readers of speculative fiction like myself. Authors build worlds that are either very little like but at least somewhat based on the world we find ourselves in or add something weird to the mundane; as mundane as a 1950s small-town street in America (think Stephen King’s IT). In other words, we add something weird to a what is naturally, at the idea-germination stage, mundane. In my case this mundane concept is a city. It does not matter if this city is situated in the real world or a creation of our imagination. The concept is fundamentally mundane.

The formalist viewpoint involves showcasing the ‘form’ of the text, e.g., viewpoint, punctuation, vocabulary, sentence length, and description, to communicate the weirdness potential of the mundane: it essentially celebrates the process of creativity not necessarily the artifact. A formalist writer would not necessarily shine their brightest spotlight on their story concept and their world-weary baggage they bring to it. That baggage is obviously there; it has to be, but may not be at the forefront. I would think the most commonly type of formalist writing is poetry. Poetry by its nature subverts the more common (these days) prose. Reading a poem forces you to defamiliarize yourself from your normal prose way of reading, making the act of reading, of seeing the word, weird.

This formalist device of weirding text has a fancy name thanks to the Russian formalist literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky. He termed it ostranenie (Russian for “estrangement” or “defamiliarization”). In his seminal essay “Art as Device” (first published in 1917), he used Tolsoy’s works to explain ostranenie. Stories do not necessarily have to be conceptually weird to be weird.

The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight rather than recognition. By enstranging [his spelling] and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and “laborious”.

Tolstoy was apparently an avid practitioner of ostranenie in his prose to defamiliarize the reader of the mundanity of his very real-world settings. Tolstoy’s favorite means of ostranenie was to describe an object or event without ever naming it, to make the reader feel as if experiencing it for the first time. When we experience something for the first time, it is always a bit weird. As a side but related note on Tolstoy’s ostranenie; his depictions of the final moments of life and first moments of death are truly sublime, which is another kind of weird, but that is for another essay.

Outside of poetry, it seems to me anyway that the art of ostranenie, and it is an art unto itself, has gone out of fashion. It is often relegated to being called ‘purple prose’, or overly ornate description, no matter if it is well done or amateurish. If Tolstoy or almost any other author of the “classics” would write today, I would not have much confidence that they would not be considered guilty of purpling their prose, and the verbose literary gods help those usurping modernists!

A large proportion of readers today do not want to be laboured to read, so anything that is not easily recognizable or does not meet their perception is just too much work. Our reliance on recognition has made us into automatons, unable to see--really ‘see’. Shklovsky addresses this directly in the same essay after giving an example from Tolstoy’s diary in which the writer cannot remember if he already dusted the sofa because it is such an ‘automatic’ thing to do:

Automatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at our fear of war.”
If the complex life of many people takes place entirely on the level of the unconscious, then it is as if this life has never been.

He later continues:

After being perceived several times, objects acquire the status of “recognition.” An object appears before us. We know it’s there but we do not see it, and, for that reason, we can say nothing about it. The removal of this object from the sphere of automatized perception is accomplished in art by a variety of means.

Thus, I call on myself, and others who so wish, to not simply write recognizably. Unsimply write anew what you see. Invite your readers to labour along with you. See the unrecognizable.

Here is the image I saw while at the café writing this essay that inspired my attempt at my version of ostranenie that began this essay:

Other Essays

Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thive

Conspiracy of False Citizens

<- Episode 9

Episode list

Ridiculous. Zanit stood in the murky comfort behind a pillar near the kilbet-stone doors of the Shradran. After all I’ve had to do for the RCFC, I’m nervous about meeting Kar? The highly polished doors were almost ten times his height, barring him from the sermonic pulsing on the other side. They must’ve cost a fortune. Don’t even think many Void Barons would be able to afford just one of them.

He had finished his tedious ten-day registration process to begin his conversion to Fudanejiy. He was now free from the required sequestration and permitted access to most of the cathedral. The Shradran, however, remained forbidden. As with all initiates, he had a month to decide if his calling from the Fudan was a delusion or a true vision before moving onto the next phase as a ShreDeva. That was more than enough time to accomplish his mission.

The Shradran antechamber was kept in perpetual late dusk by some uncanny engineering preventing the day’s unusually vibrant rays from penetrating the floor-to-ceiling windows running the entire length of the chamber. The shadows thrived within each alcove and niche and behind each pillar. Shadows were usually his partners even friends in his covert profession, but these cathedral ones seemed to conspire against him. He shivered from their black collective gaze.

The bass leaking from the afternoon sermonic finally began to retreat from his bones; the thumping hum of the cathedral cosmos quieting. The pillar stopped his collapse to the floor from the sudden sensory deprivation.

The slow groan and grind of the reflective black doors signaled the official end of the sermonic. A group of silhouetted figures billowed from the incense miasma that was making a futile attempt to escape the Shradran’s gravity. The figures de-hooded; their synchronized inhaling of the feathery outside air produced an echoing gasp. Zanit wasn’t sure if it came from the Devas or the bored gasp of the cathedral itself. The multi-colored specs of their eyes began to separate into delegations of the same hue.

Will I recognize him? He studied the groups of Devas whispering as if any human frequency would upset their god. Unwavering belief changes people.

He found a couple of Green Eyes in discussion. One of the drew his attention. Against his brain’s wish, he smiled. That him?

The Deva slowly turned toward his direction. Both sensed the nearness of their mutual heart pain.

Zanit took a chance and walked toward the Green Eye couple. He didn’t have to walk far. The Deva was coming toward him.

“Kar?” Zanit’s whisper stuttered with that weird melange of fear and elation.

“Zani?” The green of Karnen’s eyes flickered to convince his brain of what they were seeing. “What are you …? How did you…?”

“Is there a more private area where we can talk? I feel like I’m constantly being watched in this place.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening from the shadows mocking the day.

“I thought you’d be used to that,” Zanit could almost taste the bitterness on Karnen’s breath.

“Can we just move a bit out of the way?”

“O.K.,” Karnen put his cowl up with only his green eyes giving any hint of someone inside. He grabbed Zanit’s arm and moved them to a more secluded alcove.

“That’s better,” Zanit said “Do you mind keeping your cowl down? I’m not quite used to talking to a pair of glowing green eyes.”

Karnen sloughed off his cowl, not bothering to respond.

“It … It’s nice to see you again, Kar.” Zanit tried to keep his happiness subdued.

“Yes, you as well.” Karnen’s insincerity barely concealed. “It’s Deva Lindeshi-Traiz now.”

So cold. Angry. No. Just hurt like me. Zanit needed the man he loved, still loved, be a little excited. It’s been nearly two years.

“What are you doing here?”

All Zanit could see through those green eyes was obsessive resentment. “I’m here on research.” He never could lie to Karnen when they were together. It was much easier now. His honesty was a big part of what ended them. What would be like with us if I never told him the hard truths? My truths?

Karnen’s eyes shuttered to piercing slits. “Researching more places to blow up? More innocent people to kill?”

“I didn’t blow up anything. I killed no one.” The lying was too easy.

Karnen’s whisper sharpened. “You murdered aunt Baeys.”

“You … your auntie … dead?” Zanit had met Karnen’s favorite aunt, the only relative he spoke to, many times. She was a wonderful person and loved Karnen dearly. He did know what to do. He wanted to hug him so tight they would become one mass of love and sympathy. It was not an option. Not here. From Karnen’s unemotional tone, probably never. Saying I’m sorry’ felt too automatic. The only choice was to maintain the lie. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Kar.”

“The Purcalla Line!” Karnen raised his voice to a susurrant shout. “You still with them?”

“Yes, but only logistical support. I am no longer active in missions. I haven’t been for some time,” He had to get him to believe him or the mission put on hold or aborted entirely. “Besides, there has be no responsibility taken for the incident.”

“Incident!” Karnen again almost shouted then remembered where he was. “Incident! How ‘bout massacre!”

“Yes. You are right. It was a massacre.” He couldn’t lie about that.

Zanit took in a deep breath. Held it. Released. “I didn’t come here to discuss politics, I’m here as a researcher.”

“‘Research’, huh?” There was no attempt at hiding his sarcasm.

“I went back to teaching part time at Deishan University. Professor of Neo-cultural anthropology and religion.” He waited for any kind of thaw.

“Religion? You’ve never been religious.”

“I’ve always been interested in religions, Kar … Lindeshi-Traiz. Not the time to burn this bridge more than I already have. “You knew that. I don’t have to believe to be interested.”

Karnen’s green glare could have frozen a sunbeam.

Zanit looked back at the Shradran doors to avoid looking into those eyes that will never see the lover they had together. He’s become them. Dark, cold, hard.

“Why are you telling me this?” asked Karnen.

“I need your help. My research is on how new religions, such as Fudanejiy, can be thought of as Neo-culture in their own right.

“Fundanejiy is not that new, Zanit. It is almost a century old.” There was a sense of pride in his voice.

“Religion-wise, it is relatively young. Look at Bilik Gwij. It goes back to the foundation of Gwij; to the beginning of time.”

“How do you need me?” Karnen quickly asked trying to get him away from starting one of his famous lectures.

“I would like you to be my main cultural informant. Since this is the closest Cathedral-Fudan to Deisha University, I thought I would make it my field study. I only found out you were here from the devotee list when I entered.

Karnen stared at Zanit for a few seconds, still frigid and expressionless. “I can’t help you.” He quickly turned around and melded into the possessive shadows of the vast antechamber.

He’s become one of those shadows, Zanit thought. I’ve really lost him for good.

Episode 11 ->