The Firebird, and Pants VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 3 (Draft 2)

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Three: The Firebird, and Pants

Marion peered through the metal metal grill work down five floors to the cracked and settled asphalt below. Water had filled in old pot holes. The alley was littered with garbage that consisted of a few more broken bottles than Marion had hoped to see.

"I don't know that I have a choice at all, "Marion said and swung a naked leg over the railing of the fire escape.

He swung his other leg over and then stretched a leg out to reach the other fire escape. His foot touched down and, as he attempted to shift his weight, Marion lost his balance and his feet slid further apart. His left leg snagged on the railing on his fire escape and left him stuck awkwardly balancing between the two fire escapes. Marion shifted his weight and tried to find a balance point where he could safely move his right foot over to his fire escape, while at the same time trying to not look down. Marion did not consider himself particularly afraid of heights, but balancing over a five story void had a way of introducing the concept that was new and surprisingly effective. As he struggled to free his left leg and also regain enough balance to move his right leg, Marion noticed movement from the alleyway below. Taking a moment to look, he saw a man in a dark suit and sunglasses watching him for the alley below. Marion tried to get a good look, but the fire escape creaked and Marion was forced to heave his right leg to his side to prevent himself from slipping further. He quickly swung one leg and then the other over the railing to safety before looking back. But when he looked again, he saw nothing but a poster for "Men in Black 5: K's Still Alive!"

Shaking his head in the hopes of clearing his mind, Marion reached through the small opening left in his window and grasped the slim line of rope that would open the lock on his window. He pulled, and nothing happened. He pulled again, a little harder, and felt a strange resistance in the line. He gave the line a solid yank, hoping to pull loose whatever was snagging in his system, and hear a melodic jangle that Marion knew was the sound of three coat hangers falling to the floor and his system failing entirely.

Marion looked back the Men in Black poster and barred his teeth in a growl as though the poster and ghost CIA agent look alike were somehow to blame. He looked through the window and saw his pants laying in a crumpled pile in the hallway. Marion knew that he would now have to break the window if he wanted to get in.

Worries began to have a town council meeting in Marion's head. He worried that Mr. Grimly would hear the sound of breaking glass. He worried that Mr. Grimly might use the sound of breaking glass as an excuse to barge into his apartment. He worried that Mr. Grimly would use the whole event as an excuse to evict him and possibly even call the police. Mr. Grimly had never liked Marion as far as he could tell. They had never been friends. Marion didn't think Mr. Grimly liked friends. You couldn't charge friends rent.

"I don't think Mr. Grimly will ever forgive me for that inflatable Moose Incident," Marion said quietly to himself, "He won't forgive me for this either, but at least this one would be my fault. But, If I'm very lucky, Mr. Grimly will never know about this one."

Marion knew Mr. Grimly was a stranger to compassion, and that he would evict if no rent was forthcoming. And since Marion couldn't pay his rent if he got fired, options seemed to be a choice between bad option number one and bad option number two. So no point in hesitating now.

He looked around, but saw no tool that he could use to break the window. Marion examined the window. It was very old and consisted only of a single pane of glass. From experience, Marion knew that the window let in the cold without mercy. It couldn't be that strong. Marion looked at his hands and experimentally balled both hands into fists. Marion shook his head, unconvinced at this own display. He closed his eyes, and swung a clenched fist at the window.

The sound ofbBreaking glass erupted in Marion's ears and he was surprised that blow hadn't hurt. He opened his eyes to find his right hand red with blood and slowly became aware of a sharp sting in his knuckles.

"I'm never lucky." Marion said quietly as he pulled the last big glass shards of the window and began squeezing through the window. Half way through, Marion realized he could have opened the window now that it was broken and not risked cutting himself on the shatter glass still in the frame. He realized this as the glass cut his thighs in neat angular little grooves. The pain in his thighs was excruciating as he pulled himself through. When he finally stood inside his apartment again, he found himself wondering if Mrs. Trilby was right about that tumor and his attention to detail.

He walked to the sink and washed his knuckles and his thighs, delicately putting X-Men band-aids over the cuts, using a whole box of band-aids in the process, since he didn't have any larger bandages, his last box of band-aids in fact. He felt a bit woozy and wasn't too pleased with the day's current performance. Marion splashed water on his face to hopefully clear his head. But when he removed his hands and looked at the mirror, his reflection was gone.

In place of the mirror and the expected reflection, Marion was staring at a bird, much like a pheasant or a peacock with a long sweeping tail, but also impressively expansive wings. The bird was an iridescence of reds and golds that moved in waves over a black backing like fire over hot coals. Actual flames licked the air around the bird and it looked at Marion intently. Then it cocked it's head away into the distance and took flight, a nimbus of flame surrounding it. Marion debated following it, but found that it didn't matter. He was flying behind the firebird- coasting on its wake.

They flew out over a lonely highway, passing a worn down old diner out past the end of the highway into a vast wilderness and then on. They flew over a small village built of mud or clay with grass on the roofs and further on into a blasted landscape of burned fields and shattered homes. The land below took on the appearance of a war zone or the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, slowly becoming increasingly urban until the firebird's flight took them straight into the heart of a city under siege by its own people, with fires in the streets and upturned cars. The firebird aimed its path for a huge skyscraper in the center of the city and Marion held his breath as they aimed straight at the shimmering glass facade.

The scene shattered to sound of exploding glass and Marion found himself floating in darkness.

The firebird circled and then landed in the void and sat, quietly nesting in the darkness. Marion looked around and saw a vast spiderweb stretching across the darkness and a small girl with hair in dark braids stuck fast in the center of the web. To Marion's horror the web began to dance as something large and heavy began to move along the web, deep in the darkness. As Marion stared in horror a pounding drumbeat began in the distance. The Girl began to struggle and then seemed to notice Marion. She looked at him, and then seemed to look past him. Marion turned around to follow her gaze and found himself staring at his reflection in the mirror of his bathroom.

Marion stared at his reflection a moment, and then shook his head.

"Maybe Mrs. Trilby is on to something," He said quietly.

Then Marion noticed that the drumbeat was still pounding in the background. And then Marion realized it was the sound of a meaty fist pounding on his apartment door.

"I know you're in there you little newt. I heard you banging around. If that glass was anything important its coming out of your damage deposit. Hell, I'll skin you and sell your skinny hide to make up my missing rent! Open this door before I break it in! Doors are expensive!"

"I'm not that far behind on my rent." Marion muttered to himself, "Maybe torture and then allow to live level of late. But no, Grimly goes straight to skinning and selling my hide."

Mr. Grimly kept banging on the door, demanding to be let in.

"Let me in! I'm your landlord! You've got no secrets from me you filthy little salamander!"

Marion realized that Mr. Grimly was counting on Marion opening the door so the landlord could pretend he had been invited in. But Grimly sounded really angry and might graduate from yelling to actually entering the apartment without permission, Tenancies Act be damned.

Marion ran out into his front hall and grabbed his pants.

Marion heard the sound of jangling metal from the hall, a key chain. Panicking, Marion jammed a chair under the door and flipped the three door-bolts into place. Marion had added the door-bolt two months ago after Mr. Grimly snuck into Marion's apartment to wait for Marion to return home. Mr. Grimly had tried to insinuate that he could have Marion killed and the body disposed of quite easily. The landlord had made references to alleged criminal friends and a dog breeder who wasn't picky on what she used to make her kibble. Marion hadn't really believed the landlord, but had no intention of testing his claims and had installed the door-bolts the next day, one at the top of the door about forehead level, one about chest level and one near the ankles. Marion didn't bother to put on his grey work pants. Instead, he went back to the broken window and, opening it this time, he slipped out and began climbing down the fire escape, pants in hand.

Marion heard the door open and then a metal thud as the door reached the limit allowed by the door-bolts

"How dare you install a door-bolt you little worm! I'm going to nail your skinny ass to the wall you little skink!"

Marion tried to pull on his pants as he ran, but the converse made that impossible. He paused and untied his laces, ignoring the passersby who were no doubt eyeing up his Astro Boy boxer briefs. As he pulled his pants on, Marion looked up to see the number eight Main street bus pulling into the stop. He grabbed his converse and ran in mismatched stocking feet towards the bus stop, but was still a block away when the bus pulled out from the curb and rounded the corner onto main street.

Marion staggered to a cursing and wheezing halt, watching his only hope coil out of sight round the corner. He sighed.

"I'm never lucky."

Dreamwalker Rises VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 1 (Draft 2)

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse One: Dreamwalker Rises

"We are that with which stories are made. And our little lives are added to the story when at last we sleep forever. And so we become part of the dreams that others dream when stories are told around a council fire."

The darkness wreathed the council fire as the flames spit sparks and pitch into the night sky. Dreamer stood, looming before the fire to best cast a shadow across the younger members of the tribe as they watched the storyteller in wide eyed wonder. Walker stepped from behind Dreamer and continued speaking where Dreamer had left off.

"These are the stories of the tribe. These are your stories. They belong to you, but more important- you belong to them. You will pass them to the unborn elders of tomorrow. You will keep the Demons and Heroes of the tribe alive by keeping those stories alive, for there is nowhere else where Demons and Gods may live but within the stories that we tell each other."

The children murmured to each other. Virtually every child had heard this before, but every child began to understand the weight of the words in their own time. Some children required many tellings of the story before the lesson took hold. Amidst the sound of murmured voices, Dreamer rose like an ambushing warrior behind the children- now outside the circle- and several of the younger children shrieked.

"And so we will tell you the stories of the First Mother and her companion: First Hero. We will tell you of the Witch Doctor and the Locust King. We will tell of deals First Mother made with the Elder known as Weaver and the pact made between First Hero and the Great Serpent Elder. We will tell you how the Witch Doctor found the ancient laws of the Great Phoenix, that mystery of Void and Fire. And will tell you of the Wendigo and the Hunger that drives them, the fearsome Men of Black and White- that Evil Wyrm known as Falsenight. And we will tell you of what lies behind their hunger and the fear that drives them."

From inside the overlapping Capes that Walker wore, the storyteller produced a grapefruit sized wooden egg carved with designs depicting two figures walking a winding road. The Storyteller grasped the wooden egg at both ends and twisted, and the egg split at the middle with a hollow popping sound. Inside lay another egg, this one carved with depictions of the tribe's history. Dreamer reached in and delicately plucked the smaller egg and then wrenched it open, launching a still smaller egg within high into the air. Walker reach up and snatched the egg on its descent, revealing it in the fire light to be marked with Wendigo faces, and popped it open and tipped the egg within to fall towards the dirt. Dreamer knelt and caught the falling egg with cupped hands and showed the children the vast city walls carved into the egg's surface. Dreamer then gently opened it to reveal an egg again. Dreamer picked the egg from its resting place and handed it to Walker. This egg was smaller than a quail's egg and, as Walker displayed it to the children, the children could see a great tower depicted upon the egg. Walker grasped the egg with both hands, leaving it momentarily invisible. Walker's hands unclasped and in the space where the egg had been lay a black cloth. Dreamer reached up and snatched the black cloth without standing and unfolded it with a flourish and an unexpected flash of light exploded into the air above the storyteller.

Walker stood behind the council fire, cape spread and arms wide.

"And now, the story begins again."

But before either storyteller could speak again, the night was banished by a blast of shimmering snow that roared like a winter lion across the landscape and scoured the darkness away leaving everyone blinking in the sudden washed out light and shivering from the bitter cold. Snarling withered figures with wild hair and hollow eyes appears from out of the whirling clouds of snow. The creatures almost looked like people, and in fact they had been people once. They snapped jaws full of broken bottle teeth and advanced upon the council fire.

"The Wendigo are here." Walker said, flinging the capes aside and drawing his Flanged Mace: Boneshaker.

"Worse will be coming. Children, get behind us." Dreamer added and drew the twin tomahawks: Victor and Edgar.

The corrupted Knights of the Locust King marched out of the freezing mists, the Knights of Unity and the Knights of Purity. Behind them, the monstrous Harvester and the legions of Truthtellers and Confessors stood ready and waiting.

Behind Dreamer and Walker stood the children and the tribe. Between the Locust King's forces and the Tribe stood only these two Storytellers dressed in their crimson armor against a tide of white shrouded soldiers ready to do them harm. Slowly the ranks of Locust King begin marching forward, pikes and Gusarmes out and leveled at the two in blood red raiments. Troops with muskets and flintlocks march besides ones with Kalashnikov variations. The troops washed over and around the two warriors like an avalanche. The Tribe lands disappeared around the two, buried in snow and freezing mists. Tips of corn stalks poked out from the snow as they withered from the cold.

Dreamer and Walker stood back to back in the midst of the enemy, their weapons in constant motion. The army seemed disinterested in them, marching past to devastate the landscape and drown it in winter. Then, as though a signal had been given, the army parted like the red sea and a figure dressed in crimson war robes fringed with gold strode out from the army brandishing an enormous scythe: the Locust King.

Walker stood ready, a bulwark of defense with no gaps through which the enemy could enter. Dreamer shifted constantly, a puzzle no enemy could decipher. Dozens of Knight and Wendigo bodies lay in a gruesome circle around the two. The Locust King strode over the bodies and swung the great scythe one handed in an arc the cut the air in two as it went. The blade bit through Boneshaker without slowing and slit Walker's red armor cleanly, dropping the storyteller to the ground. Dreamer turned to face the Locust King, but the scythe kept swinging, completing a full circle and continuing around, slicing through Dreamer as though the storyteller were maybe of morning fog.

The Locust King stared down at the ruined forms of the storytellers, "What makes you all oppose me? I bring liberation. Through me you all are freed to tell your own stories. Why are you fools willing to die rather than embrace my offer?"

The army in white stormed across the landscape until the land lay like a blank canvas out to the horizon. The Locust Skin stood, leaning on his scythe, staring down at the bodies of Dreamer and Walker, three figures in red against a background painted white.

The wind whipped the Locust King's gilded robes like a scourge and tossed his twin feathered crests wildly.

"Why do you resist?"

And the wind replied, "A good story is like soil, it must be built up and nurtured. You nurture nothing. You get one harvest, and then the winter rains wash away the top soil and nothing grows for years after."

The Locust King turned, swinging his scythe wildly trying to find the source of the voice, "Where are you?"

"Here. We are of the story." The voice said, echoing as though it were two voices speaking as one.

"Who are you? I have defeated everything and everyone."

"Have you defeated the fear that drives you? What do you fear so much that you felt driven to burn and salt everything you love? What fear could drive you to this destruction?"

"I fear nothing! There is no fear!"

Before him, the broken pieces of the storyteller reassembled themselves into a single form, neither Dreamer nor Walker, but both.

"What are you?" The Locust King hissed.

"We are Dreamwalker. And we will test your claim. We are Dreamwalker and the Shadowlands of your mind and your dreams are open to us. We shall see if there is no fear within your story."

And Dreamwalker stepped forward and passed into the Locust King. And the Locust King shuddered as it happened.

The Shadowlands of the Locust King stretched far away, the horizon pulling up rather than down. Color was missing in these Shadowlands, everything was black or white and the contrast was jagged and painful when viewed too long. Dreamwalker stood in front of a great tower of crystal and steel, a door opened at the base of the tower. And Dreamwalker entered.

Inside the tower the floor was built of black and white squares in a chessboard pattern and a great staircase with no protective railing curled up to the top of the tower. Positioned like chessmen around the room, the Men of Black and White stood frozen in their black suits and black sunglasses, sharp against white shirts and white pocket squares. As one, the Men of Black and White turned to look at Dreamwalker. As one, the Men of Black and White raised their left hands to touch their left ears. As one, the Men of Black and White spoke.

"Target has arrived. Commencing operation. Target will be sanctioned."

Dreamwalker drew twin tomahawks and flanged mace and charged the Men of Black and White. The Men of Black and White moved between the blinking of Dreamwalker's eyes. They did not seem to move, but when Dreamwalker swung a weapon towards one of the men of black and white, that man was simply not in the same spot when the weapon arrived. Dreamwalker could not see them move, but that did not stop the storyteller from feeling the results of their movement. Fists like concrete cinder blocks struck from impossible angles, and gunshots rang out after Dreamwalker felt the exploding pain of bullets striking flesh.

"We can't beat them. They are too many, too fast."

"Target is injured."

"This is the Shadowlands, we live or die as the story demands."

"Target is vulnerable."

"This is not the Shadowlands. This is his Shadowlands. How do you think his stories end?"

"Proceeding with sanctions."

"It ends in the throne room. It has to. We can make it."

Dreamwalker moved, leaping straight up to grasp the spiral staircase. Dreamwalker pulled up onto the stairs and charged up the staircase with the Men of Black and White in hot pursuit. Dreamwalker took the stairs five at a time, almost flying up the stairs. Below on the stairs, the marching cadence of the Men of Black and White echoed like a drumbeat of a military band. Another sound added to the chorus, the rich syrupy sound of something very large sliding across a wet surface, black oily liquid dripped from the edges of the stairs as Dreamwalker ran. Coiling down from above was a great monster serpent with a head like a crocodile and a body wide enough to swallow Volkswagen.

"Hello little morsel." The Serpent said, "I am Falsenight, and it is time for you to learn your place. You are not the hero of this tale."

The Enormous black monster rolled and swirled around the staircase, a liquid cable the width of a sedan, a oily black tsunami in the form of a serpentine leviathan.

"You must remember your role, teller of tales. The chosen one must face our hunger and choose. You may only guide the chosen one, but the choice is not yours to make. The hunger is not yours to face."

"How can we guide the chosen one if we do not know what drives your hunger? How can we teach the chosen one if we do not know the choice that must be made."

Falsenight chuckled, a sound not unlike shaking a bag of razor blades dipped in bear grease.

"That is your challenge. Don't you like a challenge?"

"The Dreamwalker is the storyteller and the mentor. Knowledge is their portfolio." A cold monotone voice whispered, a sound so quiet the breeze tore it apart. "The unknown terrifies them, they cannot quantify it or explain it or weave it into song."

"Who's there?" Dreamwalker called.

Falsenight chuckled, "You have awakened The Grey. He smells your fear. You who sought the fear that drives our little Locust now must face your own."

"Show yourself!"

"If you wish."

Before Dreamwalker a shape gradually faded into view. Human-like, but absurdly thin with long insect-like fingers and a grotesquely large head, smooth like a carapace with mandibles rather than a mouth and compound eyes. The being hung in the air, silent and monochrome, as though superimposed on the the space and not fully occupying it.

"We know your fear. We can take it away: take control, walk our path, and the uncertainty will vanish. We promise certainty, stability, safety. Walk our path. Tell our story."

Dreamwalker took a step back. Falsenight chuckled a third time as the Men of Black and White marched through the serpents great coils and blocked the path down the stairs.

"There is no way out. We offer an answer."

"No, you offer lies." Dreamwalker stepped back again, but this time there was no stairway beneath, and the storyteller tumbled backwards into the unknown.

* * * *

Marion Day awoke gasping for air, and sat upright in bed. He looked around at the disgraceful mess that was the bedroom of his bachelor suite. The bed was a simply mattress laying on plastic on the floor of the room. Movie posters were mounted on the wall with rubber cement, 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', 'The Last Man on Earth', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and 'The Day of the Triffids. Books were left in piles around the room, clothing left piled on books. A laptop lay in the otherwise unused closet. An alarm clock sat on its side next to the bed.

Marion looked around the room again, "It was a dream. Damn. What time is it?"

He looked at the alarm clock, tilting his head.

"Why's it on its side? It's five past five! I start work at six. Did I not wake up when I shut the alarm off? Damn, I'll be late for work!"