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Parallel Journeys Part II::

Parallel Journeys  Part II   copyright Jonathan Zap

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   black and white photo of Parallel Journeys Collage----copyright Jonathan Zap

IX

       Slowly, I spiraled downward in the quirky darkness of the duck’s mind, and as I descended the speed of my rotations accelerated, like water spinning down a drain. When I reached the epicenter of the duck’s mind I plummeted downward, like a snowball tossed into an elevator shaft. Instead of hitting the bottom of anything, I crossed the threshold of the new reality and found myself shooting upward like a rocket in the star dappled heavens of a new world. Unlike the skimpy universe I had tumbled in previously, this seemed to be a proper universe with a rich array of stars and nebulae. And I was not just tumbling either, I had a powerful upward trajectory and in the vacuum of outer space there was nothing to slow it down. Up ahead of me I could see a distant planetary body that was pale and luminous. It glowed softly like a giant pearl set amidst a vast jewelry of stars. I could see that my trajectory was aimed directly for it and, intuitively, I knew that this was a world I was destined to encounter. A feeling of deja vu inevitability intensified as the separating kilometers dwindled rapidly.

     In this new reality I had also regained my corporeal snow body, and was clothed in the dark over coat and other shabby garments I had been wearing when I had crawled into the refrigerator box portal so long ago. My overcoat billowed around me when I encountered the thin atmosphere of this planet and acted as a wind break or parachute. Fortunately, gravity was weaker than usual on this smallish planet, though it still seemed that I was heading toward it at a potentially injurious, if not flattening, speed. A silvery, grey landscape rushed into view and I impacted a surface far softer that I could have dreamed possible.

     I submerged in an almost liquid layer of grayish dust several feet thick. I swam easily to the surface, but found that I had to keep swimming to keep above it. There was too little density to support my weight on the surface, but because gravity was so weak I could, if I balanced myself just right, lie on the surface, supported by some sort of surface tension. Any unbalanced movement, however, broke the surface tension and I was forced to make doggy paddling like gestures to climb back onto the surface. Panting, I lay carefully on my back turning my head slightly and using the wide angle of my mutant-enhanced peripheral vision to scan the landscape all around me.

     Great dunes and starlit desert plains of the silvery, grey dust stretched out to the vanishing point of the horizon. Everywhere was a vast monochromatic desert of dust with pale shadows and wind swept topography. Dust that had gotten into my nostrils during impact caused me to sneeze violently and, of course, that broke the surface tension and I had to doggy paddle myself back to the surface. A small amount of dust that I had dry swallowed made me feel nauseous and left the faintly radioactive aftertaste of very old nuclear fallout dust. I was seized now by a fit of sneezing and the sneezing not only broke my hold on the surface but sprayed clouds of dust into my eyes and ice crystals. My eyes were irritated and the whole surface of my snow skin felt itchy and uncomfortable. I was becoming painfully aware that I was highly allergic to the principle ingredient of this new world----dust.

     Once again I struggled against the dark undertow of despair. I knew it was only a matter of time before my allergy would become fatal in such a disastrously inhospitable environment. I wondered about my other half and whether it faired better or worse in its new universe. Telepathically, I tried to call out to it, but there was no response, only a reverberating silence.

     In attempting telepathic contact, however, I made a serendipitous discovery that undoubtedly saved my life. Exerting my mutant psionic powers during this unsuccessful attempt at telepathic contact I observed a strange pulsing of colored light coming from deep inside my snow body. The light was strong enough to be visible through my shabby clothing. Pulses of different colors came from different parts of my body and thanks to my photographic memory I noticed that these corresponded perfectly to he placement of the chakra system in the human body. If in this reality my subtle energy was actually visible it might mean that my mutant psionic powers were increased generally. I tested this by focusing my will telekinetically and found that it was strong enough to resist the weak gravitational field of the planet so that I could hover a meter or so above the surface. With more practice I found that I could hover and glide forward at a modest pace. In this way, my chakras pulsing with color, I was able to glide over the undulating desert. By not touching the surface I also stirred up very little dust and my allergic symptoms began to abate.

     I traveled long, long distances in this almost featureless landscape. The life force that glowed within the icy crystalline structure of my body reflected off the silvery dust beneath me as a living corona of psionic energy, an aura of concentric bandwidths of flickering, spectral color. In this way it partly illuminated some of the near shadows of the undulating dunes and on one occasion this proved to be life saving.

     There was no dawn, no day light, in this twilight world, and therefore no conventional way to measure the passage of time. The cheap digital watch with a busted wrist band that I kept in my over coat pocket was still there but it seemed to tell time counting backwards---- and even that it did inconsistently----it would stay at the same time for a long while and then it would start hurriedly losing about a minute a second as if trying to catch up with backwards time. I was unable to eat, drink or sleep and the landscape was so colorless and unchanging that after a while I just tranced out, scarcely paying attention. A strong ammonia smell, brought me out of trance for a moment and I noticed my flickering psionic aura reflecting off something moving in a dune shadow. I intensified the light I was projecting and saw the first living organism I had noticed in this lifeless desert world. It was a pale, faintly luminous scorpion like creature about a meter in length with a densely coiled tail like a giant watch spring. I glided back evasively just in time. The scorpion flicked out its tail at me so fast it made a sound like a ricocheting bullet. When it missed it came scurrying toward me with terrifying speed. Fear intensified my psionic power and I glided out of range with great speed. The scorpion’s gleaming bulb like eyes stared at me with furious hatred, and when it saw that it could not overtake me it hissed with a horrifying intensity as bubbles of ammonia came out of its mouth. Before I had time to recover from my shock I caught another whiff of ammonia and there was another scorpion almost in lethal range. I evaded it and it also hissed and bubbled ammonia.

     I soon discovered that I was in an area of desert that was heavily infected with these evil scorpions and that they were even more dangerous than they looked. It was obvious that they had some sort of telepathic, collective mind as after the first attack they all seemed to be waiting for me. They also seemed aware of my evasive abilities and adopted counter strategies. Occasional groups of three or more worked cooperatively, trying various ambush tactics. Fortunately, their ammonia scent always gave me warning and I was able to stay out of range. Their hatred for me seem to intensify and everywhere across the desert I heard hissing and the bullet ricochet sound of tails being snapped. On one occasion, when a group of three tried an unsuccessful ambush technique ( each of them rushing at me from a different direction) I simply hovered about ten meters above them. They were so enraged and frustrated by this simple, but effective, evasion that in their fury they attacked each other, tails whipping out and slicing off body parts until they were all in pieces and bellow me was a twitching mass of infuriated scorpion parts. A couple of amputated scorpion tails ricocheted about wildly and the ammonia vapors from their dismembered bodies nearly blinded me.

     Finally I crossed out of their part of the desert and after not smelling ammonia for a substantial distance I stopped gliding and hovered for a few moments. I was exhausted. Every ice crystal burned with hunger and feverish dehydration. I was rapidly losing the psionic energy I needed to keep moving and it was impossible for me to rest on the loose dust. I forced down a rising panic and focused all my will on gliding. Somewhere there had to be something to eat and drink.

     I psi-glided across the desert until I was at the limit of my endurance. Then I saw a strange object up ahead of me. It was roughly cylindrical and shaped like a giant hook about thirty meters high. It threw an enormous hook-shaped shadow across the desert. I drew near it cautiously and saw that it had a faded stripe of red that twined around it from top to bottom. Its surface was pitted and abraded by thousands of dust storms, but here and there were patches of its original glazed surface. It appeared to be a gigantic candy cane of some sort, and there was a feeling of almost geological antiquity about it. I was so desperate for nourishment that I tried biting into it and found that under the brittle surface patches of glaze it was mostly air like dried out Styrofoam. I ate a couple of big mouthfuls. It tasted like a mixture of peppermint flavored saccharine pills, Styrofoam and dust. It left my ice crystals with a chemotherapy after taste and seemed to suck precious moisture out of my body. 

     Health issues plagued my mind. Anxiously, I realized that the dryness of the desert was causing profound dehydration. As I dehydrated my ice crystals shrunk in size and my old over coat hung loosely on my diminishing snow body.

      As a natural defense mechanism my snow tissues dehydrate in a special way. No crystals are lost, each of them diminishes in size, but proportionally, so that none of the complex, crystalline structure is lost. But once dehydration passes what’s called 'the Beckstein Limit,' there begins structural deterioration, and as this happens my bodily tissues become coarsened and reduced to the most rudimentary level of functioning. Since this tissue deterioration obviously includes the brain, there is permanent brain damage and impairment of cognitive function. As dehydration continues beyond the Beckstein Limit the permanent deterioration continues and results, ultimately, in death.

     When the last trace of my deteriorated ice crystals vaporized in the desert air I would be gone. There would not even be a skeleton left behind since my bones are not mineral, but cryptocrystalline ice. I would become absolutely nothing at all. An empty over coat lying on a desolate dune of gray dust.

     Such anxieties about my health, and the possibilities of disability and even death, stung at my mind like a thousand pale scorpions. Every ice crystal was individually aflame with thirst. My psi-gliding took on a slumped aspect. Inside my overcoat my body had shrunken and my appearance took on the anxious, bedraggled sallowness often associated with the ghosts of the anorexic. In short, I looked like a very tired version of Edward Munch’s The Scream. I continued across the endless dunes of dust for what seemed like forty days and nights of eternal gloom.

    And then, some time late on the fortieth night, I encountered two beings that I first beheld from the distance gliding toward me with shocking speed. They were as fast as fighter jets and the energy of their psionic auras were like two flames---one of deep indigo, and one of yellowish green. A heart beat after beholding them from a distance, bobbing and whipping over dunes, they hovered right before me, their auras hissed with power and their eyes stabbed me with telepathic probes. One entity glowed violet, and it was shaped like a giant skull that hovered over the desert floor throwing a purplish shadow onto the gray dust below. It had the porous surface texture of a real skull, and yet it seemed more like a horrible puppet of some kind, there was an energy behind it, a fierce will, and that will was using the skull as its form. Occasionally there were flickers of movement visible in its dark skull-shadowed eyes. The other entity glowed yellowish-green and seemed to be a giant, highly evolved grass hopper. Its expression was as unreadable as that of an android card hustler, but I formed an impression that it was benign and more of a neutral observer. There was not a trace of ill will from the grasshopper entity, but I also knew that it would not intervene on my behalf.

     They hovered in front of me, bobbing up and down slowly as though they were suspended unsteadily by hover jets. Slowly, almost too late, I realized that their bobbing movements were intended to be hypnotic. It took a great effort of will for me to keep my eyes from automatically following their movements. Mercilessly they probed me telepathically, and the weak psionic shields I was able to put up were like thin films of oleomargarine against the surgical steel of their telepathic probing.

     Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, the skull’s jovial and bitingly sadistic voice began speaking in my head. His telepathic voice had been somehow contrived to have the staticy distorted sound of an old phonograph record.

    "Ho! Ho! Ho! And how'de do!" Said the giant skull-shaped entity. "My name is Captain Skull and this is my good friend, and sycophant, Mr. Grasshopper."

     “ My named is Snowman.” I replied telepathically with as much defiance as I could muster.

    "Yes, and a fine figure of a Snowman.” Said Captain Skull laughing spitefully. "Quite a fine figure, indeed, eh, Mr. Grasshopper?” The grasshopper laughed with a horrible, thin, high- pitched insectile laugh, but there was no malice in it, somehow you could tell that it was just playing out a role." Yes, quite a fine figure of a Snowman, indeedy, though perhaps a bit dried up, perhaps a bit on the deteriorated and catatonic side, but one can certainly see that here was once the potential to be a perfectly ordinary Snowman, yes indeedy, Ho! Ho! Ho!" The cruel intention and content of Captain Skull’s words tore into me, and my self esteem became a bloody rag caught on a television antenna during a raging, winter storm.

     “So just what on Pluntith do you think you’re doing here?” asked Captain Skull.

     "I guess I'm on a quest." I replied weakly. 
     "Ho! Ho! Ho! On a quest! The Snowman on a quest! That's rich, that's truly fabulous, really a most entertaining delusion! Imagine, a Snowman on a quest! Imagine that Dr. Beckstein, I mean, Mr. Grasshopper. Why you are quite the amusing jokester Mr. Snowman!"

      "What's so freakin’ funny?" I asked, some deeply defiant aspect of me awakened by the challenge. “What's wrong with my being on a quest?"

     "Ho! Ho! Ho! I say. Ho! Ho! Ho! You do have me absolutely in stitches, in sutures, positively in sutures, in long rows of black sutures, you really do! What a marvelous misconception, really quite a creative, neurotic delusion.”

Whenever Captain Skull spoke I was disoriented by the phonograph record staticy timber of his voice, his statements were unpredictable yet they sounded as if they had been replayed so many times they had become scratchy.

     "I still don't get it. What’s the delusion?" I asked in a challenging tone.

     "Ho! Ho! Ho! He doesn't get it! My but this Snowman can really play off the straight Man to a P, to an absolute P. What a magnificent jest! The way you pull that off with such a straight face!" Captain Skull imitated me speaking with a squeaky falsetto voice,

'I'm a Snowman. I'm going on quest.’    

  ---Why you do it with such a dead pan one can almost believe for a moment that you yourself believe it . As if you didn't know that you are a mere ornamental entity of the most limited sort with crude features wrought by careless children on a whim. And as for your life span! Ho! Ho! Ho! Seasonal at best, n'est pas? And your body! Ho! Ho! Ho! Your body! Ho! Ho! Ho! Why sir, to say that your body is weak, to say that it is flaccid and sallow, to say that it is soft and mushy to an extent that bullets and knives pass through it with pleasurable ease, to say that it is utterly lacking in the cardio-vascular capacity and muscular definition needed for the rigorous exertions of the quest, why sir, to say that your body is absurdly lacking in physical charisma and both laughingly comical and sickeningly repulsive in appearance, why to say all this would only be to flatter you and protect you from seeing the real and actual horrors of your bodily existence. Why to butter you up with such fake compliments would only be a cruel encouragement of the delusion that you might be adequate for anything. Surely you must have noticed that most of the serious players on quests have abdominal six packs, high muscle definition, sun tans, long flowing hair and noble foreheads. And, Ho! Ho! Ho! I can't say that I remember anyone on a quest with a warty, cone-shaped nose, spindly stick-shaped arms, pale tentacle hands and flabby snow belly! Ho! Ho! Ho! Why even if there were handicapped parking spaces on quests with refrigeration, can you imagine what would happen if you butted in? Why my goodness, everyone would be so hysterically laughing at your looks, not to mention your weakness and incompetence, that there would be such non stop hysterics at your expense that nothing would ever get done. And Ho! Ho! Ho! How could there be a quest if nothing got done?"

     Captain Skull’s words shocked me into silence. It seemed that everything he said was true. Impotent despair paralyzed me and I found that I was compelled to stare into the dark skull shadows of Captain Skull’s eyes. I felt my self esteem as a tiny cinder washed down the sewer of a city abandoned to eternal nuclear winter.

      Deep inside the enfolding skull shadows of its eyes glowed a gyrating indigo spiral and I found my awareness tumbling through that spiral, tumbling into a black out.

X

     When I came out of the black out I found myself leaning heavily on a bathroom sink. There were razor blades on the white porcelain and bottles of pills, sleeping pills. The water in the sink was a dull, scumy white like heavily used bath water. The water was slowly turning, turning in a vortex centered on a steel drain that made a loud slurping sound as the water was sucked into it. The spiral, twisting of the water was strangely fascinating, and my mind became immersed in the counter-clockwise rotation of the vortex. The thought occurred that the universe must have flipped over and begun turning backwards. As the last of the spiraling water began to disappear into the center of the drain a little rubbery thing, a rubbery little ill-formed doll with a tiny, squeaky voice said,

     "Sorry folks, no after life." And it disappeared down the long, dark drain.

      A wave of intense nausea passed through me and I found myself clutching both sides of the sink for support. I was sick. I lifted the cover of the toilet and threw up. There were pink, rubbery flakes and shards in my vomit. I stood up and looked at myself in the cracked mirror, the florescent light in the bathroom mercilessly revealing the flabby white features and misshapen nose of a body that seemed both flesh and snow. I looked down at the twisted veins of my pale, skinny arms and the complex tangle of track marks, each mark a tiny little needle hole mouth, each mouth hole puckering with rabid hunger for more stuff, more of the dreamy white powder. My head felt heavy, and I could barely keep my balance. I opened the medicine cabinet and found works and a glassine envelope of beautiful, snowy powder. Reverently, I poured the powder into my steel tablespoon, added measured drops of tap water and caressed the bowl of the spoon with the flickering orange tongue of a plastic lighter. The sound of the bubbles roiling on the spoon was like a chorus of tiny angels heralding the approach of paradise. I picked up the hypodermic. It was greasy with perspiration from many weeks of use. It felt plastic and hollow and hungry. But as I drew back the plunger and sucked up the precious fluid it began to glow with a warm power in my fingers. And then the gruesome part of the ritual, trying to find a live tube in all the tangled meat that could suck up all that warm liquid paradise. My needle had to make many new hungry red mouths before it found home and was able to come inside me.

     My hands felt numb and swollen. I let the works fall clanking into the sink and walked heavily out to the old sofa bed that had once been tan but was now mostly gray with dust and grime. Living in mother's basement wasn't so bad anymore, now that mother had stopped coming out of her room. My weight felt heavy and warm on the sofa bed. I felt comforted by the smells of stale cigarette and pot smoke, spilt beer and old urine. It was like I was floating on a heated water bed in a beautiful, dark motel room. I closed my eyes and floated in the velvet darkness for a long, long while. But then the lovely darkness was interrupted by annoying sound, the wailing sirens of alley cats surrounding the house.

     Those evil, little pygmy heads of fear and paranoia popped into my mind. Alley cats again in the backyard, wailing alley cats all around the house. They must smell my mother upstairs. They'll let everyone know, they're trying to get me in some kind of trouble!

     I struggled with my lethargic, rubbery limbs until I was standing. I wobbled, stabilized and then grabbed the taped hockey stick handle by the sofa bed and walked out of the house. But the back yard was empty, and there was no sign of a cat any where. I looked around carefully. All the backyards were dark and empty. Low, howling winds shook the old aluminum wheels of the laundry lines and rattled rusting TV antennas. How long had it been that all the yards were empty? There was that unmistakable feeling of ancient abandonment. Alley cats were nowhere to be found. The thought form, alley cat, had not whispered its sinuous, feline phrases for centuries. There was not even the dark stain of an alley cat crumbled to dust in the old cement driveway. Slowly, I remembered that the world had ended such a long, long time ago…

     It wasn’t so bad being the only one left so long as I had the dreamy white powder. The white powder had all the answers. The white powder was a winner. And the reason the white powder was a winner was because it always made all the right moves.

     The wind howled through the empty yards. Underneath the howling wind I heard that strange wailing again, but this time I could tell that the wailing was happening inside my head. Weird sirens were speaking to me inside my head. I couldn't tell what they were saying, but they tormented me, like kids whispering about me in the school yard. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but I knew it was about me. Out of my peripheral vision I saw a white bulbous thing, blurred with speed, whip around the back of the garage. I wasn't supposed to see that, I thought nervously, it's that Skull again.

     The wailing sirens vanished and a melodious, deeply aware voice spoke softly inside of me,

      "Please don’t be alarmed. It's only another incarnation seizure and we're here to guide you." To help me calm down the voice sung me a little lullaby,

“We're the ones with the great big eyes.

We're the ones who help you when you dies.

We're the ones that watch and wait.

We’re the ones that guide the Snowman's fate.”

     And now I saw that things were changing. The winds had quieted to nothing and there was a benevolent presence in the yard. They were behind me and all around me, but for some reason I was unable to see them, I could only feel their great dark eyes at the edges of my vision. The guide floated toward me and into visibility. He was wearing old blue jean coveralls and a sun-faded red and white checkered shirt. His head was long gray and elastic, and the enormous black almond-shaped eyes probed me with impersonal curiosity. Above, in the deep darkness of the sky a luminous disk hovered, waiting. "What do you need?" The guide spoke gently, lovingly, in my head. I looked down at myself, looked at my bloated gut and the network of track marks that covered bodily tissues soured by endless years of alcohol, cigarettes and needles. I saw the emptiness of the back yard, the cement stained and broken, and thought of the dark, porous husk of a mother in the upstairs bedroom.

     "I need a new body. A new incarnation." My request lingered in my mind as the guide gently willed my eyes to close. It’s long, tapering fingers projected rapid pulses of energy into my body. Alien finger energy vibrated through me electrically, generating a cascading chain reaction in my snow crystals. The vibration intensified until it seemed like my very snow molecules were being split apart. I'm having another incarnation seizure! I realized, and hot electrical wires of fear burned into my snow. I was destabilizing. Waves of entropy shattered me, and as I was shattered, the surrounding reality of empty cement yards and abandoned apartment buildings deteriorated with horrible rapidity. It warped and thinned and then suddenly popped like an old blister. The flimsiness revealed made me feel intensely nauseous. Moments later I blacked out.

XI

     The next thing I knew there was an old woman tugging on my arm, trying to get my attention. She wore a white lab jacket, her face was haggard and there were enormous bags under her eyes. She was obviously in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion. She wanted me to follow her, so I did, and while we hurried along she spoke in a voice that was edged with barely suppressed hysteria

     "We've tried everything. I haven't slept in eleven days. No one will do anything...Look." The woman gestured with a pale, blue veined hand. There were scientific and medical-looking equipment everywhere, but she seemed to be directing my attention to the binocular eyepiece of an enormous black microscope. It looked like it was probably the most advanced optical microscope in the world, but of an earlier era, probably the nineteen forties. It was composed of massive black enameled components labeled Zeiss Ikon. There was an illuminated circular stage on which was mounted a single glass slide with a drop of yellow oil in the center. The blue veined hands of the woman began to tremble violently. She tied an old piece of surgical tubing around one arm , took a glass and steel syringe from her lab coat pocket and injected herself with a yellowish liquid. She looked up at me with dark, terrified eyes and I saw that her eyes were yellowed, and her hair ravished by chemotherapy with only a few thinning tufts on her barren scalp. "I've lost all my natural beauty." said the woman with a terrible sadness.

     I turned and looked through the binocular eyepieces of the microscope. There was a blurry yellowness with something at the center. I removed my gaze from the eyepiece and examined the illuminated stage of the microscope. A large oil immersion objective rested in a pool of yellow oil above the glass slide. I looked back into the eyepieces and adjusted the fine focus knob. There was a strangely shaped dark object, a cell or a tiny organ or organelle, suspended out of focus in a field of yellow oil. Knobs on the stage of the microscope allowed me to alter the position of the slide. I readjusted the fine focus knob and the object came imperfectly into focus. It was a tiny Snowman with dark, empty eye sockets.

     I looked away from the microscope. The old woman was gone. The hospital room was dark and dusty, it was filled with equipment, but there were no people around. I wondered for a moment if all this meant that I was dead, and that was why she wanted me to look in the microscope. Sometimes people don’t know if they’re dead. I realized and it suddenly occurred to me that a lot of movies had come out recently about someone who had died, but didn’t know it. What if they were all trying to tell me something? I decided to look back in the microscope to be sure of what I had seen.

     I adjusted the fine focus knob but suddenly I heard a crack followed by a loud beeping sound. I had a terrible twinge of fear. I believed that the beeping came from the microscope and that meant that I had shattered the glass slide with the oil immersion objective and permanently damaged the valuable optics.

I looked up anxiously to see if anyone had observed my costly blunder. But when I looked up I saw that the beeping was actually the obnoxiously loud beeping of a garbage truck backing up.

XII

     The sound of the garbage truck was amplified by the narrowness of the alley and I had a pounding headache that seemed to throb in time with that stupid beeping which continued even as sanitation workers banged metal garbage cans full of glass bottles into the back of the truck. My blood stained eyes struggled to focus on the cement surface of the world. My head was pounding, and there was the severe nausea typical of the aftermath of an incarnation seizure. A yellow Taco Supremo wrapper smeared with the grease of fried cow meat had become stuck to my face and I peeled it off. The smell of rancid cholesterol and artificial cheese flavoring was sickening. Once again my memory was nearly blank, and I felt exhausted. In the cold light of an overcast morning I brought reality slowly, and reluctantly, into focus. There were deep, black tarry stains on the gray concrete. On the other side of the alley were the rust colored stains of fossilized dog shit. I must have had night sweats because pieces of debris were stuck to all my exposed snow skin. I pulled a newspaper advertisement off the back of my hand. Parts of the newspaper did not peel off and bits of newspaper fuzz stuck to my skin. The headline of the newspaper ad read, "Physician Recommends Suffering as a Treatment for Chronic Pain.”

     Sluggishly I tousled with that old tyrant, gravity, and brought myself to a sitting position. Back and neck pain felt like a series of white hot knitting needles stuck in my snow. By my side I noticed a worn plastic shopping bag that looked vaguely familiar. The most complex and fully formed thought of the morning arose in my mind, This is my shopping bag. I felt heartened, momentarily, by the realization that I still had possessions. My shopping bag. I repeated the thought with satisfaction. In the center of the worn folds of plastic was a little pool of amber liquid. When I picked up the bag the amber fluid streamed down the bag and dripped onto the bone dry cement. I opened the bag and found a large flask made of colorless glass that contained a dark amber liquid. I sensed the bottle as highly significant, its contours were familiar to my hand and it resonated with vague memories. It was more than half filled with an oily, reddish brown liquid that had almost exactly the color and viscosity of boiled cockroach juices. Identifying the flask was a white paper label sloppily adhering with glue wrinkles convoluting the paper. On the label was a crude black ink drawing of a skull and cross bones, and a snowman with black Xs for eyes lying unconscious in a puddle. The words "Snow Comfort" in large black letters were stenciled on the top of the label.

     A painful feeling in my chest distracted me from consideration of the bottle of Snow Comfort. I looked down at my body. It felt as if the pain were coming from my clothing, perhaps some sharp object sticking out of one of my pockets. Underneath my dark over coat I wore a rayon shirt that had an upholstery-like pattern of brown and orange flowers. There were dark perspiration stains under my arm pits that went right through the shirt and the overcoat. The pain seemed to originate from the shirt pocket where I wore a large, white plastic pocket pen protector. On the flap of the protector was a decorative seal---a red and gold heraldic crest design with a white knight wielding a golden spear and a white eagle clutching a vanquished black serpent. In Gothic lettering bellow was an ominous looking Latin motto. The protector contained a single, splintered plastic ball point pen jammed into it diagonally. The pen had punctured the plastic of the protector and leaked a greasy black ink that had penetrated my thin rayon shirt and seeped into the naked ice crystals within. Carefully, I unbuttoned the shirt. There was a black nucleus of ink stain at the ice crystal surface. Deep into the translucent snow tissues the nucleus reached long wavy fingers of black ink that moved toward invisibility at their dendrite-like extremities. The creeping rivulets of stain felt like the insidious tendrils of a growingly malignant cancer. I tried to wipe off the main nucleus of stain with sheets of newspaper, but most of it seemed to have penetrated beneath the surface.

     I knew I was dangerously dehydrated and decided to drink the Snow Comfort. The dark, oily liquid tasted deliciously of coffee, cola, cocoa powder, rum and non dairy creamer. It immediately soothed my nausea and glowed deliciously inside of me. I drank the rest of it down in one long swallow, and as the rich, creamy fluid went down into me my mood went up and up and up. I reached into the shopping bag and found a battered transistor radio. I turned it on and by another improbable coincidence found that my favorite song was playing----“My ExGirlfriend's New Boyfriend” by the Depressives. I felt perky enough to sing along with it for a minute, but the station cut off the last few seconds of the song (I hate it when they do that) and an annoying commercial jingle came on. A chorus of toddlers with irritating falsetto voices sang endlessly repetitive lyrics, "Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. Buy and eat. Buy and eat. Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. Buy and Eat. Buy and Eat...." The jingle went on for several minutes. I tried changing the station but the jingle was playing on all of the stations. The only difference was that each time I changed to another station the children seemed to sing with greater speed and urgency. Then a loud beeping sound came out of the radio and a red LED display blinked, "Commercial Evasion: Fine: 35.73 Credit Units." The display kept blinking and now the radio wouldn’t play anything.
 
     I searched further into the shopping bag and found a big white rectangular box that was incredibly narrow. It seemed to have been chewed through on one end and the thin white card board was gummy with saliva. On the box were alternately pink neon and yellow-green letters that read, "Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks Buy and Eat Buy and Eat." Beneath the lettering was a glossy picture that showed blond-haired, blue-eyed teenagers with golden sun tans playing volley ball on the beach. They wore skin tight nylon bathing suits that revealed the Olympian muscular definition of their supple bodies. Their faces were frozen in orgiastic grimaces of youthful summery euphoria. In the foreground of the scene was a powerfully built boy wearing a white and red foot ball jersey. The boy was openly copulating with a prepubescent girl who was handcuffed and blind folded. The boy's jersey had a big number “twenty-three” on it and red letters that read,

"Joey Consumer
  Studback
  Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacker"

There were open boxes of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks lying on the beach all around him.

      Following an irresistible impulse I put the chewed through part of the box to my mouth and poured the contents into me. Industrial strength flavorings of turbo charged pink lemonade and sour green apple exploded into my mouth and set off a massive sugar quake in my brain. My mouth was so full of gummy sugar and chemical flavoring that I could scarcely breath. Artificially colored sugar bubbles began to shoot out of my nose and pop loudly. Inadvertently, I opened my mouth too wide and a gooey satellite of the main wad of mouth candy fell to the concrete followed by a long, thin comet of sugary spittle. Without even thinking, I tongued the chewy mash of pink, yellow and green sugar right off the cement. I chewed and sucked avariciously until all the sugary chew, the satellite and the main wad, were completely gone. When they were gone I tried to inhale all the sweet candy vapors still hanging moistly in the air about me. The sugar vapors dissipated and I felt nervous and shaky. Nausea returned and my stomach felt like an over heated drying machine tumbling ruptured bleach bottles of old bacon grease and the charred carcasses of scorpions and insect antennas burned in a chemical waste fire.

     Suddenly a police man of some sort in a yellow uniform appeared at the end of the alley. He barked into a gigantic black rubber bull horn, "Attention, you are an unauthorized consumer! Your presence in this private retail corridor is illegal. You need to step to the sidewalk so we can scan your identity code." At that moment an enormous tabby alley cat with brilliant yellow-green eyes ran into the alley.

     "C'mon Snowman! We've got to blow this alley." Electric shockwaves of deja vu jolted me as I realized that I knew this alley cat, that I was somehow familiar with its beautiful eyes and glossy stripped coat. Its sleek elegance in form and moving was highlighted by the oppressive ugliness of the alley. "Snap out of it Snowman!" the cat said. "Don't you, remember me, Eddie Cat?" He gave me a penetrating stare. Eddie Cat, of course, my old friend Eddie Cat, how could I have forgotten Eddie Cat? While I puzzled about this there was a loud stapling sound and a painful impact on my shoulder. Some type of metal dart was stapled into my arm and attached was a yellow photocopied form of some sort.

     "Quickly!" said Eddie Cat. "They're serving papers on you." I looked up and saw that the police man in the yellow uniform was holding a big horn shaped gun. Another stapling sound and I ducked just quickly enough to avoid a paper dart that nearly caught me in my left eye. "C'mon!" shouted Eddie Cat. I exerted every ounce of my strength to follow behind Eddie Cat who ran with blinding speed. His speed seemed to pull me along in a wake of feline acceleration as the alley rushed away from us and we skirted between stores and garbage cans. We raced over roof tops, down fire escapes and through mazes of narrow alleys. One alley opened into a garbage filled vacant lot behind a row of abandoned stores.

     "Ah, we can slow down now matey." said Eddie Cat. I was wheezing horribly trying to catch my breath. Gently, Eddie Cat removed the paper dart from my shoulder. A little clump of ice crystals came off with it and I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying out.

     "Where are we?" I asked breathlessly.

     "Why, Upright City of course, the land of the flesh covered masters." replied Eddie Cat, surprised by my question.

     "I'm getting too old for this, Eddie Cat." I gasped, still trying to get my breath.

     "You're only as old as you feel." said Eddie Cat giving me a huge encouraging smile.

     "But I feel old." I replied.

     "Oh.” Eddie Cat paused and thought about this for a moment, “Then I guess that means you are old, Snowman. Do you think that you'll be getting put to sleep soon?" I felt a dark inevitability about Eddie Cat's question.

     "I don't know. It might be for the best."

     "Hmmm, I'm not so sure about that Snowman." said Eddie Cat. "Did I ever tell you about what happened to my cousin Debbie Cat?” I shook my head. “She was put to sleep too soon," Eddie Cat's voice lowered to an ominous whisper, "and we've heard that there were problems in the afterlife because of it."

     "What kind of problems?" I asked nervously.

     "Y'know. Problems. Papers to fill out. Remediation courses. Arbitration. Surgery. Complications. Audits. Chemotherapy... In fact," Eddie Cat motioned for me to bend down so he could whisper in my ear. "There's a rumor that Debbie Cat might get sent back down to Annoying World and have to do the whole nine lives all over again!"

     "Oh my God, I’m sorry to hear that." I replied in a shocked whisper.

     "Best to go the distance kiddo." said Eddie Cat with a friendly wink. But after he winked at me I got the distinct impression that he had made up the whole Debbie Cat episode, and I began to have suspicions about Eddie Cat’s credibility in general. I sensed that he had an unexpressed agenda of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what it was. We walked across the cracked asphalt of the vacant lot toward an area thickly grown with weeds.

     We traversed vast mazes of weeds that seemed to only become more vast and densely entangled as we traveled inwards. Many of the weeds were over my head and they grew in curved, twisty, narrow rows. These rows would intersect each other, and at each intersection Eddie Cat would stop and sniff and then decisively turn his head in a particular direction. At first I thought we had entered an over grown lot and kept expecting that we would get to the end of it. But we kept walking, and never seemed to get to a place where there was anything but rows of weeds in every direction. I began to wonder where Eddie Cat was taking us.

     "These weeds are such a twisty maze," I remarked to Eddie Cat “ how can you find your way?" Eddie Cat turned and looked back at me as if I had asked the stupidest question imaginable.

     "By instinct of course." said Eddie Cat smiling at me with the sort of smile a friendly social worker might have when handing a balloon to a retarded child. By instinct of course. replayed in my mind as we resumed walking. What is this instinct that makes Eddie Cat so powerful and confident? I wondered. It's obviously a magic power of the highest order. I certainly don't seem to have any of this instinct at all. Yet how can I live in this world with out this power? I would perish before I could find my way out of these weeds without instinct.

     We walked for quite some distance. The morning wore thin and the white hot sun rose in the sky. I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on me, making my body sag. Sweat began to bead on my forehead and with a nervous start I remembered about the Beckstein Limit and what could happen to me if dehydration went on for too long. Eddie Cat, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the heat, and I felt deeply ashamed of my bodily disadvantages. I dabbed my forehead with an old pocket handkerchief and decided, after some anxious consideration, that I would not tell Eddie Cat about my condition.

     As we walked, the weeds seemed to change. At first the weeds were all very similar. They seemed heavy and dusty, with branches thick as cables and leaves that were wiry or covered with a dull fuzzing of white fungus. After we walked for a long way I noticed the ground sloping downward. We seemed to be walking toward the center of a giant crater and as we gradually descended the weeds became weirder looking and more various. One had waxy translucent skin and strange bulbous growths all over its spindly structure.

     "Where are we going, by the way?" I asked, privately disturbed by the increasing deformity of the weeds.

     "Cat City, of course." replied Eddie Cat "Don't you want to hang out with us?" My face flushed with embarrassment. Eddie Cat had a way of always throwing me off balance socially.

     "Oh of course I want to hang out with you." I replied with considerable embarrassment. "I'm honored that you were nice enough to invite me. I only meant that I'm having this slight memory problem, but I'm sure it's only temporary. It's just that I keep blanking on certain things like people, places and animals, that I just can't find in my head."

     "Oh. OK. I'm glad you shared that with me, Snowman. It's important that we communicate openly." replied Eddie Cat.

     "It's very nice of you to be so considerate to me." I said with awkward sincerity. "I really appreciate your help." I had traveled such a long way without companionship and was genuinely touched by Eddie Cat's close attention.

     "Don't mention it." said Eddie Cat. "I've always enjoyed being your social worker. And even if I didn't, I'm well paid for it."

     "You are?" I was shocked.

     "What, paid?" said Eddie Cat looking extremely insulted. I was in an agony of embarrassment.

     "Oh, no, no I didn't mean that, I didn't mean about being paid, of course you're being paid, why shouldn't you be paid for being with me, see it's all just a misunderstanding. I just said the words, 'You are--' because I was trying to say, You are my social worker.' But when I said, 'Are.' my voice broke and it sounded like a question. And of course you were perfectly right to misinterpret it as a question because it was my voice that cracked and made it sound like a question. I..."

     "It's OK." interrupted Eddie Cat. "It's cool. Don't worry about it. What's done is done. It's over. Let's just forget about it."

     “OK." I replied quickly. We walked together for some distance in a nervous silence. By the side of one very long row of weeds we passed two large lava rocks in a tiny clearing under the hot sun.

     "We'll rest here." said Eddie Cat. We each sat on a grayish rock that felt like hot, scratchy Styrofoam. The heat was intense and the air was thick with greenish weed scent. I felt bone tired and thirsty, but Eddie Cat began to lick himself and purr loudly with perfect contentment. How can Eddie Cat so totally go into licking himself like that? I wondered. He seems to be able to enjoy it with unreflecting pleasure as if he hasn't got a care or worry in the world. I would be so embarrassed to lick myself in front of someone else. After a while, Eddie Cat finished licking himself and turned toward me and it seemed as if he were noticing me for the first time. Then he did something utterly disarming and unexpected. He lightly brushed his furry cheek by the side of my head in a gesture of feline affection.

     "Don't worry about any little thing, Snowman.” said Eddie Cat in a purringly sing-song voice. He was still purring even as he was speaking. "Don't forget I'm not just your social worker, I'm also your good friend." I was touched by Eddie Cat's obvious sincerity and warmth. It encouraged me to ask a question that had been bothering me.

     "Eddie Cat, I know that you are taking me to Cat City but for some reason I am not thinking of the place where we are right now."

     "This is Weedland." said Eddie Cat. "And a more wild and desolate place is not to be found outside of Annoying World."

     "You mean we're outside of Annoying World?"

     "Of course. That's why you don't see any Uprights. Annoying World is wherever the Uprights live. And since this is still the age of the Uprights we also refer to this whole plane of existence as Annoying World."

     "How did Weedland get this way?"

     "Because of the Uprights."

     "Who are the Uprights?" Eddie Cat looked at me with astonishment.

     "You know who Uprights are--- Skinjobs, the pale furless ones, they call themselves Humans.”

     "Oh. But how did the Uprights create Weedland?"

     "By dropping the N Bomb on it of course" The phrase N Bomb made my blood run even colder than usual.

     "What's the N Bomb?" I asked in a hushed, shaky whisper.

     "You never heard of the N Bomb?" asked Eddie Cat, obviously amazed at my ignorance. "It's only the most advanced bomb ever made. It's really amazing to think what it can do. Why, it's over fifty times more powerful than the M Bomb! I mean, we're talking about a little piece of hardware, a little firecracker here, that can MIRV into ten thousand separate almost microscopic war heads each one of which is thirty times more powerful than the early L Bombs."

     "L Bombs?"

     "You never heard of the L Bomb?" Eddie Cat was astonished by my stupidity. “Just what sorts of bombs have you heard of?"

     "Well, I think I remember hearing something about the 'A Bomb' and the 'H Bomb." I replied defensively.

     "What? You mean those ancient mushroom bombs? Why kittens throw them off of rooftops on Parade day. Next you'll be telling me you're from the Atomic Age. Time to wake up and smell the mutations, Snowman! Haven't you noticed something abnormal about eight foot weeds and talking cats? We're heavily into mutations here. How do you suppose you became a conscious Snowman? It's obviously a mutation. The species are always evolving and mutating, but especially after all the irreversible damage the J Bombs did to the reality waves. I wonder what sort of Upright mind came up with the idea of a bomb that actually damages things on the Quantum Mechanical level, a bomb that ultimately burned cancerous pinholes into the black fibers of space-time? And now they say that damage to space-time is spreading. Reality wave distortion is beginning to diffuse back to the past so that it's starting to make all the earlier times more weird too."

     "Are you sure about all this?" I asked in state of shock and confusion. I sensed that there was both truth and misinformation in everything Eddie Cat said, but it was hard to discern which was which. Eddie Cat gave me a shrewd and penetrating look.

     "Haven't you ever noticed something odd about being a conscious Snowman?" asked Eddie Cat.

     "Well, now that you mention it..." Eddie Cat’s train of thought was disturbing

     "Look, haven't you been experiencing weird blackouts and sort of out of body experiences where you feel like you are flashing through different lifetimes, different incarnations or universes?"

     "You mean I'm not the only one having that problem?" I asked, feeling suddenly elated. That I suffered incarnation seizures had always been my deepest, darkest secret, a burden that I assumed I, alone, had to bear. Through many long lifetimes I had borne this shame alone and in private. Never before had I been able to talk to another sentient being about my condition. Relief washed over me in warm waves. I looked up at Eddie Cat with a new found love and gratitude.

     “Nothing personal against you," said Eddie Cat compassionately, “but in an earlier, more virginal reality, before the J Bombs caused irreversible distortion of the reality waves, something like you would never have happened." Shocked, I responded with reflexive denial.

     "It's not true!"

     “Well, just Look about you Snowman. What sort of mutations do you see? Do you see how everything is a relatively slight variation of normal reality?. In the ancient days, cat's couldn't talk and they didn't have as much structured thought as we do. They couldn't hold objects in their paws very well and were only a fifth our present size. Our ancient ancestors were known at the time as 'Alley Cats.' They lived in the margins of Upright society and were treated as second class citizens. But despite these differences we are still very much like earlier feline species. Similarly, these weeds here are variations of ordinary weeds. But," Eddie Cat lowered his voice to an ominous whisper, "you are something that cannot even be named.... You are the forbidden mutation. You are the Inanimate become Animate one. A Snowman was never before a living thing. There is no other like you. In a sense, you are the J Bomb's only son." I looked into Eddie Cat’s yellowish green eyes.

     "I feel the truth of it. I am a mutation. I am a highly mutated mutation."

     "Yes you are. Everybody knows that you are the most reality deteriorated mutant in all of Annoying World."

     "I am?" There was a sudden spike in self esteem, almost like a sugar rush. Nobody had ever told me that I was the most at anything.

     "Isn't it obvious? Everybody else's body has a definite structure, but you are amorphously composed of ice crystals. I've read your entire medical evaluation." said Eddie Cat.

     "What medical evaluation?" I asked suspiciously.

     "Oh my God, don't you even remember anything of the early days when we first found you? Your medical evaluation was recorded on a tiny laser disc that you wore around your neck. The Uprights had run a whole series of phased reality scans on you. They say that you are formed from an extremely unstable field of nuclear magnetic resonance which has generated a unique mutation-hybrid of organic and representational reality waves." Eddie Cat sounded like he was reading from papers and I wondered if he really knew what he was talking about. I had a distinct feeling that I was being fed misinformation.

     "Well, does this medical evaluation say how I got so mutated?" I asked in a challenging tone.

     "Why, yes it does, Snowman. The evaluation says that your biological mother abused----or, shall we say, challenged herself, with an army surplus reality wave distortion field generator."

     "Why would she do that?"

     "According to the evaluation your mother was part of an underground cult that felt they could use reality wave distortion fields to expand their awareness. They weren't aware, or didn't care, how much it mutated their DNA. They were probably just doing it for a quick buzz." I put my twig like hands over my ears.

     "It's not true! I don't believe it! Not a word of it."

     "I'm sorry, Snowman." said Eddie Cat. He brushed against my leg in a friendly, reparative gesture that immediately calmed me. "I didn't mean to upset you. Let's forget about the evaluation. Everything will be just fine once we get to Cat City.” I felt calmed, but I could also feel that Eddie Cat was schmoozing me. It seemed quite possible that everything he said was a lie, but another part of me wanted to go along with it, wanted to believe I was getting definite answers. Also, I would do anything to avoid the terrible loneliness I had felt tumbling alone through space and through so many life times. I clung dependently to Eddie Cat, and wanted, desperately, to believe him. My reverie was interrupted by a question.

     “Can you remember where you've been these many suns that we haven't seen you?" asked Eddie Cat.

     "No." I replied truthfully. I could recall falling through space and that there had been many lifetimes, but a deep amnesia still covered all the specifics.

     "You must have had more of those incarnation seizures. Can you remember being in any other lifetimes or dimensions?"

     "I can't seem to remember much about other lifetimes. The truth is I can't remember much of this lifetime either. All I can remember is that I had this dreadful headache. It was like a Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack hang over headache only a thousand times worse."

     "You mean all you can remember of all your incarnations including this one is a headache?" Eddie Cat was incredulous. I suddenly felt nervous and defensive.

     "Oh no, I can remember some stuff of course," I replied evasively,. "It's just that...I mean what causes these incarnation seizures I've been getting? Can't anything be done for this sickness? Aren't there any sort of antibiotics or pills of some sort I could be taking for it?"

     "Whoa, one question at a time Snowman," said Eddie Cat, "let's talk about the cause first. The cause of the seizures is pretty obvious. Remember I told you that you are formed of some highly unstable fields of distorted nuclear magnetic resonance? Well, every so often, more and more often it seems, those unstable fields get a little too unstable. When that happens, your reality waves can shift to a parallel universe. When the system restabilizes you return to Annoying World. It used to be called Missing Time Syndrome."

     "What about treatment?" I asked gloomily.

     "Treatment? Well, you have to realize that the underlying cause of your distortion and instability problems is the over all deterioration of space-time. When there is a seasonal flare up of reality wave distortion most of us ordinary mutants get a little nauseous or a slight headache. You get massive incarnation seizures. Remember, treatment is only one aspect of the healing process. The first step is to think of this as more of a challenge than a handicap." Eddie Cat's words sounded sweet and well meaning but they sure didn’t keep me from feeling depressed about my condition. We walked down another long weed row in silence. I felt tired and soggy. There was a white hot sun over us now and I felt the Beckstein Limit hovering darkly on my bodily event horizon. There was a weird smell of heat baking on dusty soil and green weed sap boiling in wilted stems and leaves.

     "We must continue the healing process." said Eddie Cat after a while. His voice had taken on an hypnotic cadence. "Tell me what you remember of your unhappy childhood." I shook my head.

     "I don't remember."

     "You mean you don't remember your foster mother Betty Cat?" I shook my head silently, as a feeling of deep, undefinable shame came over me.

     "It's a pity you've lost the memory." said Eddie Cat sadly. "Your blessed foster mother, Betty Cat, may she rest in peace, was a wonderful guardian for you----it was she who found you when you floated down the Western River in an old plastic laundry basket." Slowly, like a developing Polaroid, a memory began to form in my mind, but then it faded away again.

     "Ah,” said Eddie Cat, his eyes lighting up suddenly. “I see what your problem is! You're suffering from Repressed Memory Syndrome!” Eddie Cat’s tail trembled electrically with excitement and delight. Sheepishly, I nodded my head in agreement. I wasn't sure what Eddie Cat was talking about, but I desperately wanted to please him and gain his approval.

     Eddie Cat danced an ecstatic little feline gig and began singing and rhyming with horrible excitement, making up the words as he went along:
 
"Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Candy and catnip spice and everything nice. Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Makes me famous, makes you well, health and happiness, everything will be swell. Repressed memory syndrome. Repressed memory syndrome. Pots of treasure beyond the shrouded veil! Repressed Memory Syndrome reveals the hidden tale! Makes your past a many splendoured meal, like thick slices of luscious veal we can eat with great zeal! Repressed Memory Syndrome is the best. Makes you heal, gets me a lucrative book deal!" I shuddered nervously. Eddie Cat seemed crazy, perhaps dangerously crazy, and his yellow eyes glowed greedily. His tale vibrated electrically as if he had stuck his paw in a high voltage outlet. And yet there was something intensely charismatic about him, and his excitement, that made me want to follow him. "Quick, kneel down on the ground."said Eddie Cat. Obediently, I knelt on the ground. My hands were sweaty and I felt moisture from my kneecaps seeping into the dusty ground beneath me. From a hidden pocket Eddie cat pulled out a big gold pocket watch hanging from a golden chain. Under its domed crystal was a red spiral on a white background. Eddie Cat began swinging the watch in a slow pendulum arc. My eyes moved back and forth rhythmically as I stared at the watch. Eddie chanted in an ever so soft, hypnotic voice, “Getting sleepy, nice and sleepy, nothing creepy, isn't it nice to get nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nothing creepy, isn't it nice to get nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy, nice and sleepy..." My eyelids grew heavy and closed. My breathing slowed to a sonambulatory rhythm. Somewhere inside, down a long dark, corridor a door opened and memory flooded in. As memory returned I blurted out what I was experiencing to Eddie Cat.

     “I remember mother now, I remember the laundry basket. I remember the way she used to lick my face when I was little. But the other chill-dren..." As I said, "chill-dren." I found that I was clenching my teeth and my hands had became shaky and my voice began stammering. "I never got along with the chill-chill-chilldren, they were always so cruel to me. And they had a name for me. A name I didn't like."

     "What was the name?" asked Eddie Cat very interested.

     "I'd rather not say." I replied.

     "Remember what I said before about Open Communication?" said Eddie Cat in a soft, but very insistent voice. "I’ve read every Upright book written on social working, and one thing they all agree on is that you can only help those that open themselves to help. And open communication is the key to opening yourself to being open to help. As part of that openness I want you to tell me that name they called you." I felt a powerful reluctance, but my desire to please Eddie Cat gradually overcame it.

     "Well, OK, what they used to call me, if you really have to know, what they called me was, was...Deteriorated Reality Boy." I nearly choked on these words that I had hoped were forever in my past. Eddie Cat covered his mouth with his paw and seemed to be coughing suddenly.

     "What's so funny?" I felt a humiliated resentment of Eddie Cat's probing.

      "Well you do have to admit there's an element of truth to the name. But of course it is a rather needlessly blunt and literal way to put it. I can see why it bothered you that they called you such a name."

     "It did bother me, it still bothers me."

     "Well, go on, what else did the Children do to you?"

     "I'm not sure...I..."

     "Do you remember that night in the school yard?” asked Eddie Cat. Eddie Cat's words seemed to cut right into my snow body.

     "The night in the school yard?" I knew what he was talking about, but couldn’t bear for it to be brought up.

     "Yes, what happened that night in the school yard? Can you remember what happened to you that night when those Children abused you?" A wave of nausea went through me, I felt feverish and vomited. I spat vomit out of my mouth and onto the dusty soil. I clenched my fists and banged them against my forehead. I had to make the words. I had to get it out.

     "I snuck into the school yard one night of my fourteenth summer to shoot some baskets. I had this idea that if I could teach myself to play a sport really well that the others might accept me. It was the summer and I hadn't seen most of the other kids in the seventh grade for weeks. And then suddenly Kevin Cat and all his friends appeared all around me. It scared me and I gasped. You know how felines can creep up real stealthy and all when they're after you? It is the scariest thing in the world. And then the way they stare at you with that predatory stare. I was so terrified. I was only fourteen years old and there was no way I could fight all ten of them, they were only a year older than me but they were full-sized Toms. Then Kevin cat's cousin Jerry Cat started saying stuff. He started saying I was soft and that I made their school look retarded when I sat in the bleachers at foot ball team pep rallies. Kevin Cat started in, calling me 'Deteriorated Reality Girlie-Boy' and 'Soft Balls' and the like. Then with sudden feline speed they grabbed me and pinned my skinny arms against the wall of the school.

     “Let's show him how soft he is.” said Kevin Cat. And then…”I found I was having trouble breathing. I gasped for air, but I had to get the words out, "They started putting things...They started putting things in my snow. Pens and combs and pieces of sharp glass. They said they wanted to show me how soft I was." I began to sob almost uncontrollably as the remembered pain pierced my body. Eddie Cat's glittering yellowish green eyes peered into me.

      "Stop that crying!" said Eddie Cat. "You're losing moisture."

     "You mean you know about my condition?"

     "Of course we know about your condition, it's pretty obvious isn't it? Now tell me what came after, what happened after they put the things in your snow?"

     "I can't say." I replied nearly screaming. "I promised never to say."

     "You must say it or you will never learn to live with the wound. It is essential to the whole healing process." said Eddie Cat vehemently, looking at me with weirdly fascinated eyes. I was hyperventilating with anxiety , but I knew I had to say it. I gasped for air and blurted out,

     "I made them go away. Something happened inside my head and then I just looked at them and their reality deteriorated and then they just went away. They were gone." There was a long, tense silence before Eddie Cat spoke.

     "Those young Toms should never have done what they did to you." His voice was smoothly professional and had a soothing, consoling tone.

     "No, they shouldn't have." I replied bitterly. "But what I did was so much worse. But I couldn't help it, it just happened."

     "You must learn to let go of it." said Eddie Cat. "That's step number one in the healing process." I took a shuddering breath, and felt the peace of a profound catharsis. "Come on." said Eddie Cat. "We've stayed here long enough. Let's make it to Cat City before night fall. Weed Land is no place to be when the sun sets."

     As I walked beside Eddie Cat I felt that we had crossed some major barriers and that heavy burdens had been lifted from my shoulders. But I also felt exhausted by the emotional stress of the process and the worsening dehydration. The dry, cottony taste in my mouth was changing to the vinegary acetic acid smell associated with snow tissues that have begun to metabolize themselves. I knew I had to say something.

     "I must say I am getting very tired and thirsty, Eddie Cat."

     "Me too, but we're only a few turns away from Puddle Town. I'll treat you to some food and drink when we get there. We may even run into my cousin, Jamie Cat." said Eddie Cat, giving me a curious sidelong glance.

      The name, “Jamie Cat” reverberated strangely in my mind. That's sounds strangely familiar, I wonder who he or she is? "What kind of town is Puddle Town?" I asked, unable to remember anything about it.

     "Hmmm..." said Eddie Cat. "You usually beg me to take you to Puddle Town and yet you still can't remember it. Well, if you really can't remember I should tell you that it's more of a port than a town. It's a pleasant alternative to the bustling crowds of Cat City. And the food, spirits and lodging are all better and more reasonable than anywhere in the city. In fact, I was going to suggest that if you're feeling pretty walked out we might want to call it a day and put up at my cousin Stanley Cat's Admiral Black Paw Inn. It's their slow season so we might be able to get rooms with a view of the water."

     “That sounds very inviting." I said feeling quite attracted to the offer. "It also sounds very nautical. Is the Admiral Black Paw Inn frequented by sea going folk?"' "Why, yes it is," said Eddie Cat. "You know how their advertising rhyme goes, 'The Admiral Black Paw Inn, A valued harbor to those who travel far. A relaxing refuge to those who drink from our well-stocked bar. The Admiral Black Paw Inn is the place to get your rest. Drink and slumber here before you resume your quest!' Seagoing folk? Why, The Admiral Black Paw Inn has it's own dock and slips for up to seven boats. And there are always three or four weather -stained schooners docked there. But look about yourself if you choose to linger in the common room. Some felines hold their spirits better than others. Never arouse the ire of a pirate cat once he has taken to his cups I always say."

     "There are pirate cats there?"

     "Don't tell me you can't remember pirate cats!" said Eddie Cat. I felt it was better not to press the issue and walked silently, trying unsuccessfully to recollect something about Puddle Town or pirate cats. Soon, however, we passed by the pools of stagnant water that gave Puddle Town its name. A faded wooden hanging sign creaked in the dry breeze, "Welcome to Puddle Town" The row of weeds became much wider and there was gravel on the ground now instead of dust. Distantly, I could smell the salty wetness of an ocean breeze. The path twisted and turned, but the weeds were so tall that I could still get no glimpse of Puddle Town. The path led up a hill and as we came over the top I could see below an especially large puddle that had a crude dock of old, weathered boards on the far side. On the dock slept a magnificent cat with glossy black fur and orange stripes.

     "Ah, Jamie Cat," said Eddie Cat. "But she's sleeping."

     I stared at Jamie Cat and as I stared I felt the heat of the sun burning through the pores of my ice crystals. Time slowed as I beheld Jamie Cat with paralyzing fascination. Things deep inside my snow body tried to reach out to the musk scented black and orange of her sleek, smooth fur, to feel the infinite fineness of that taut and supple feline body. Jamie Cat. I had always known and desired Jamie Cat, though I could remember nothing about her. The gentle rising and falling of her breathing was the rhythm of the dark ocean of my eternal voyage. Jamie Cat. Now was the long winter of my discontent made glorious summer by this sudden apparition. Now I knew why I had walked the long and tortuous path, suffered the blinding fury of the sun's glare and returned from every displacement of the incarnation seizures. I had run down alleys and across roof tops, over deserts, tumbled through universes and life times to find Jamie Cat. And now was she revealed as the source and core of the life force that stirred in me, animated my existence and propelled my every movement. Jamie Cat. Every ice crystal urged me toward her. Here was the magic that Eddie Cat called instinct that allowed me to know exactly where fate called to me through all the twists and turns. Somehow I had forgotten my destiny, and now it lay for me at the bottom of a hill, waiting for me, sleeping in the sun, at the end of the long journey.

     Many heart beats of eternity passed before I realized that Eddie Cat was staring at me, his shrewd eyes two all- knowing yellow slits.

"I see some things never change." said Eddie Cat. I found his tone annoying and superficial. And how could Eddie Cat stand to look at me when beauty incarnate reposed before us? "It would be a little rude to disturb her rest, but I can see that you are keen to visit with her."

     "Oh no, don't disturb her." I replied quickly. I suddenly felt terrified of going down the hill. "Can't we just stay a few more moments and gaze upon her? Please, as my social worker, I beg of you, cross to the other side of these weeds with me and let us hide ourselves amidst their dusty foliage so I can look upon my beloved." With a patronizing shrug Eddie Cat followed me into the weeds, and once again I gazed upon Jamie Cat, feeling the pulse beating in my thin stick like arms as I inhaled the hot ocean-scented air, the same air that Jamie Cat breathed. In the ocean of atmosphere our breaths commingled. Now was the dusty, weedy world turned into a lush jungle of rich colors and radiant life. Now was the white glare of the sun made beautiful that it had this living jewel, Jamie Cat, on which to reflect its rays. And to what dark, dreary, empty night would the whole universe fall were it not for Jamie Cat, the focal point of all beauty, color and delight?

     And then there was a sudden change in Jamie Cat's breathing. The life force stirred in her, her head arose and Jamie Cat opened her green eyes upon the world. 

"Oh beauty of all beauties!" I gasped "Was there ever green before her eyes? The finest emeralds are like gray dust compared to the green magic of her wondrous eyes."

     "Hmmm." said Eddie Cat. "That sounds like a very codependent remark. All the social working books talk about this sort of thing, and it's not very healthy. Step one in the healing process…" But I was only dimly aware that Eddie Cat was speaking, and could not follow his words long enough to derive any meaning from them. How could I before the green magic of Jamie Cat's Eyes? And then Jamie Cat yawned and I beheld her beautiful pink gums, the polished white feline ivory of fangs and teeth and the inviting rasping wetness of her long tongue. Jamie Cat arose and stretched her spine magnificently---first convex and then concave as the gloss of her fur glimmered in the sunlight. Then she sat and scanned about her with those alert orbs of green. She was luxuriantly calm, but also aware of something, and the delicate moistness of her pink nostrils pulsed as they sniffed the air and interpreted the subtle variations of scent about her. It seemed as if she sensed a presence, a presence the sensing of which, made her animated, even (dare I think it?) excited. Could it be that my scent had wafted down to her and was evoking her alert attention?

     But suddenly there was an intruder. A large, shiny black Tom sauntered onto the dock without the slightest hesitation or introduction. Jamie Cat regarded him with turned head and steadfast green eyes. And then the large Tom went over and licked Jamie Cat's forehead. Instantly, my body stiffened in pain and outrage.

     "Who is this vile beast that dares lay his slimy tongue on my Jamie Cat's noble forehead? I'll gut him with my bare hands."

     "Not so fast." said Eddie Cat. "It's only Tony Cat. Jamie Cat's new boyfriend."

     "Her new boyfriend!" I nearly choked on the poisonous words.

     "I guess you don't remember anything do you?" sighed Eddie Cat a little impatiently. "Jamie Cat's been going out with Tony Cat ever since Joey Cat, her ex, found her fooling around with that young pirate Tom, Sinbad Cat."

     "What?!! This is madness and lies, I don't believe a word of it!" I cried with great agitation. But at that moment Jamie Cat and Tony Cat circled each other in a peculiar way and Tony Cat somehow got his nose near Jamie Cat's hind quarters and sniffed her there.

     "I will kill that vile beast instantly!" My icy blood was up and pain galled every crystal of my being. With smooth feline speed Eddie Cat locked powerful cat arms around me, restraining me with great efficiency.

     And then Jamie Cat turned to look at Tony Cat as if only now aware of what he was doing. "She'll shred his evil eyes in a moment!" I gasped, struggling to breath under Eddie Cat's powerful grip. But the moment passed and Jamie Cat didn't shred Tony Cat's eyes. Instead she turned and sniffed Tony Cat's hindquarters and then licked him there and.... kept licking him there.

     I turned away in horror and threw up onto the weedy dust. My mind reeled and I collapsed into my own vomit, sobbing inconsolably. When I was capable of speech I cried out,

     "Oh, I am fortune's fool! Why, why , why was I born into this cruel world to be so stabbed and mocked by fate? Let me die that I may be free of this torture!" I writhed on the dusty, vomitous ground in agony, there was snow foam around my mouth and my writhing became almost electrical, seemed to be turning into a seizure. Eddie Cat’s eyes dialated with alarm as steam ruptured the trunks of weeds that popped and hissed all around us. My rage was creating dangerous mutant psionic effects, and Eddie Cat knew this must be stopped before God only knew what happened.

     "Snowman, get a grip on yourself. This is the codependency speaking inside of you. It is not you. You are complete in yourself. You have to start feeling good about yourself. Let go of the voices of low self esteem that make you choose such dysfunctional attractions! What is Jamie Cat to you, or you to Jamie Cat? It is all an over blown adolescent infatuation! Letting go of this is the first step in the healing process!"

     "You don't understand." I sobbed inconsolably. "There is only Jamie Cat.”

     "But didn't you say the same thing about my little cousin Debra Cat? And remember how you went through that thing with Stacey Cat? Don't you see how you keep repeating the same pattern?"

     My head swam in agony and I felt like my whole snow mass was about to go critical and implode in a reality warping suction that could take down whole universes. I didn’t remember any of the she cats Eddie Cat referred to and my mind spun in a white hot vortex of rage and confusion. I looked toward the dock. Tony Cat had pulled a weed cigarette from a small leather pouch and he and Jamie Cat were smoking it together, casually walking off the dock.

     "They're gone." said Eddie Cat, reaching a paw down to help me up. “Let's get out of here. We can talk more about this when we get to the Admiral Black Paw Inn."

     I picked myself up slowly. My gut felt like it had been stabbed with the ten thousand hot knives of a spiteful universe. How could Jamie Cat degrade herself in that way? Why does Jamie Cat forsake me? Why, Jamie Cat, why, why?

     I staggered down the path in agony. Desperately I decided to appeal to Eddie Cat for help.

     "Eddie Cat, you are my social worker and my good friend, is there nothing I can do to win Jamie Cat's love?" My voice was pleading, whining, I trembled right on the brink of another huge crying jag.

     "It would be an unkindness to you if I gave you false hope, Snowman.” Said Eddie Cat with great gentleness. “I don't believe there is anything you can do. You've tried everything already. She does like you and think you are a very interesting and unique mutation, but that's as far as it's going to go."

     "But why is there no hope, Eddie Cat?."

    "Well, you know these things are always a mystery, but, in your case....I wish there was a more delicate way to put this, but the truth is you are a snow man and Jamie Cat is, well, a Cat. That's a tough barrier to cross. This has always been a problem for you. You always seem to be attracted to young she-cats and they're mostly attracted to young tom cats. It's their instinct. Have you ever thought that one day you might find a snow woman?"

     "No." I replied with enraged vehemence. I was sickened by the thought. All that bulging white snow. It was a nauseating image. "I don't like the way snow people look at all, if there were any besides me, which there aren't! You know very well that cats have always been the best looking animals around. You yourself wouldn't settle for anything other than a she-cat, why do you think I should?"

     "But there are other things in relationships besides all that mad passion stuff.” Replied Eddie cat in an exasperating tone of patient reasonableness. “What about companionship and spiritual love and all that? Don't you want someone nice you can grow old with?"

     "No. I want cats and you know that very well!" I shot back with vehement passion. "In my body, my heart, my soul ,I know I was meant to be with cats. You yourself said I was found in a plastic laundry basket as a snow baby by a cat, my foster mother Betty Cat, who always wanted another kitten. I was meant to be a cat!"

      "But," said Eddie Cat gently, "You know it is a common practice among the Uprights to abandon mutant babies. Don't you think you probably had an Upright ancestry?"

     "No! I can't believe you could even think that. I’m a Snowman. I am not born of Upright flesh!." I cried passionately. "And no, I may not be fully a cat either. But I am myself, and I am the one who can make the weeds hiss and pop when the rage rises within me. I will conquer this handicap. I will transform myself so that Jamie Cat can love me. Why should Jamie Cat be with a snow man when I myself cannot bear the sight of my own deformity? Why should she want me when I myself sicken to glance at my snowy self in the looking glass and even my shadow throws a dark blemish on the dust? Oh, why am I so cheated of feature by dissembling nature? Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that mutant dogs bark at me as I halt by them! If I cannot fully make myself a cat then I will use artifice and make myself appear to be a cat so that none can tell the difference! I will dye my crystals black, I will exercise to tighten my muscles, I will eat cat food and drink, inject myself with cat hormones and I will have the fur of cats who have died in accidents transplanted onto the whole surface of my snow skin!" I stood suddenly tall and almost shouted with triumphant fervor. " I'll just do it. I'll go for it, and it will be done!" A psionic aura---golden, with a flaring corona of violet appeared around my ecstatic snow body.

     "Snowman, don't you see this is just the manic side of you talking? You are fine the way you are. It is low self esteem that makes you think you have to be a cat or look like one. And you know that transforming yourself doesn't work. Don't you remember all those things the Gypsy Cats sold you, the herbs, the potions, the special foods? None of it worked. Remember when you gave that Gypsy cat six hundred and eighty-five credit units for that Upright machine? They told you it was called the "Snow Flex" and was specially made for snow men who wanted to look more feline and impress she-cats. But it was just an old Upright exercise machine, and those Gypsy Cats were laughing and laughing at you behind your back. The Gypsy Cats told you it would turn you into something they called "a Nordic Super Cat." and you believed them. It did make you healthier, but you only looked like a healthier Snowman. Those Gypsy Cats are nothing but a bunch of cheap conjurers and greedy tricksters. They will only take your money again to sell you on a false hope. You must learn to accept yourself as you are."

     "No, no, never." I cried adamantly, feeling the will rise up inside of me. "It's easy for you to tell me to accept myself because you are a cat." I leveled an accusing stare at Eddie cat and the aura of energy around me burned fiercely. " If I were a cat I could accept myself too. But if there are cats, how can I stand it to be no cat?" I glared at Eddie Cat. "And who are you to give me advice? You are cat; you can do things by instinct; you can just ‘go with the flow.’ Things are different for me. My instinct tells me to go over a cliff. And if that is where the universe fates me to go then I will go there! And all your advice, all your middle of the road, sensible advice, is no more use to me than the white hot sun that withers my ice crystals. I want to be a cat, I need to be a cat, I will be a cat, and Jamie cat will be mine! And Tony Cat will pay, yes he will, he will pay dearly, you hear me!"

     "Good, good." said Eddie Cat. "Let the anger out. It's the first step of the healing process." I turned on Eddie Cat savagely,

      "What healing process?" my voice dripped venomously with sarcasm and contempt. "What healing process do you have for me, an entity of Ice Crystals that withers before the sun? Can your words heal me of that? Can they tell me where I will go when my last ice crystal has turned to vapor! Can you make a she cat love me or make life make sense to me without that love? Can you save my eternal soul? You have no healing process! Your words are a sham and you social working cats are nothing but Gypsy Cat tricksters wearing soft lamb cat clothing." The raw power of my mutant, psionic rage had Eddie Cat cowering and backing away.

     "Well you needn't be so husky with a fellow." said Eddie Cat who seemed much smaller and now walked with his tail between his legs. "I told you it's all just stuff written by Upright experts in social working books. Social worker is a good job for a feline these days. I never said the books were true or anything. How is a Cat supposed to know how to do a job if he doesn't follow instructions in a book? We're not born knowing how to do these jobs!"

     "What about your instincts?" I asked sarcastically.

      "Oh, well instincts can't do everything you know. Try operating heavy machinery by instinct. That's a good way to lose a paw in a hurry. Besides, we mutant cats have been trying to get away from instinct. Instinct is what drives the lower animals. A scorpion is all instinct, do you want to be a scorpion or a pair of ragged claws scuttling along the slimy floors of silent seas? How are we to rise above instinct if we don't follow the instructions the experts write in books? Remember, this is the N190s. It's almost two centuries since the N bomb was dropped. We social working cats believe that this is the "New Age" that all the Upright books talk about. We believe that this is a time when all the spirits of everybody and everything, Uprights, felines, weeds, dung, and even snow people, will all harmonize and converge into a new era of healing and safety. This is a great secret," Eddie Cat's voice lowered to an ominous whisper, "Don't let anyone else know, but in a cave near the old sea we found an ancient magazine scroll from the olden times of the ancient mushroom bomb era. This scroll says that it is a Journal of this New Age. The scroll experts have restored the gloss of its aged pages and interpreted its strange words. It talks of an ‘Harmonic Convergence’ that will happen in our life time and begin to change everything. At that time all the reality wave deterioration will start a cosmic healing process. In the New Age, everyone will have a sacred place and a sacred value so long as they agree to respect everyone else's sacred place and sacred values."

     "Oh?" I replied sneeringly. "And what of the mutant spider wasp with its fangs that inject its prey with fluoride-based radioactive neurotoxins? Will you respect its sacred values? Your New Age is only another reworking of the stories Betty Cat used to tell me about ‘Sugar Candy Mountain’ where all the good creatures went when they died and where Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks grew on trees. Tell these tales to your grand kittens to ease their little kitty minds, but forsake to bebother my ears with these childish things and delusory trifles. Save your book instructions and New Age clichés for some other gullible sap, for I will seek my own answers and search for healing in my own way. If reality's rules say that Jamie Cat is not for me, and I not for Jamie Cat, then I will seek out the rule maker and challenge him with my woe. My body is different than this reality and ultimately withdraws from it. I will follow its direction and my quest will be to see if there isn't some other dimension, some other world than Annoying World where I can find my path."

      Eddie cat seemed fearful of my violent passion and there was a tense, charged silence.

     "Well," mumbled Eddie Cat, "If that's how you feel, then let's away to the Admiral Black Paw Inn where many a great quest has been known to begin."

     We walked down a long row of weeds until we reached another puddle. This puddle was extremely small compared to the lake sized puddle where Jamie Cat had appeared, but it was every bit as deep, and its water seemed clearer. The large puddle was dark green with algae, but this puddle was more like a well in the desert with smooth pebbles at the bottom that you could see from the top.

     "I want to wash myself here." I told Eddie Cat. I was feeling ashamed of my disheveled appearance and had an anxiety that we might suddenly come upon a whole group of cats and that they would be able to tell that I had been crying. This was not the sort of thing that I wanted to get back to Jamie Cat. Intuitively, I knew that to have any chance with Jamie Cat I had to radically transform the image I projected.

     "You've picked a good spot for washing, Snowman." said Eddie Cat. "

     “And that's another thing----" I turned to face Eddie Cat and focused an intense, dark stare on him. "I'm sick and tired of you calling me 'the Snowman.' How would like it if I called you 'the Feline’ all the time?" I did a mocking imitation of the often sing-song cadence of Eddie Cat's voice, 'Good morning the Feline." 'You've picked a good spot for it, the Feline.' 'You've got to feel good about yourself, the Feline! Not having a name is the first step of the healing process, The Feline! The Feline! The Feline! Twenty-four hours a day--- the Feline! I'd like to know who decided that I should be referred to in this cold, generic way when everyone else seems to have an actual name as if they all had individual personalities and I didn't!" I took a deep breath and spoke with impressive resolve, "Hereafter, I am no longer to be referred to, by you, or by anyone else as “the Snowman”. Hereafter, I am to be referred to by my new name..." I paused to think for a couple of a seconds. "By my new name....Jake. I am now Jake."

     "Well, you've picked a good spot for washing up, Jake." remarked Eddie Cat with a sarcastic emphasis on the new name.

     "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, and by the way, Jake, I hereafter no longer wish to be referred to as 'Eddie Cat." My new name is..., 'The Grand Imperial Dragon Slayer and Wizard King of Upper Elthamador and the Northern Lands. ' And please, don't even think about abbreviating any part of my new name because that will be taken as a great insult to my personal dignity.' I regarded Eddie Cat with a highly unamused glare.

      "What the fuck are you taking about? What has all that bullshit you just said got to do with my desire to have a simple, common place, one syllable name? And what has it got to do with you, that you feel you can mock it? I--- oh, just forget it, I don't have to .justify myself to you. Why am I even bothering with this conversation when Jamie Cat is out somewhere doing God knows what with Tony Cat!."

     Dismissively, I shooed Eddie Cat away with my twig like hands and Eddie Cat moved. I knelt down at the edge of the puddle and was about to put my hands in the water to wash off the dust and grime. But for some reason I paused before my hands actually went into the water. For a long moment I held my hands above the rippling surface of the puddle and beheld them. And as I beheld them time slowed, and my hands hovered over the silvery shimmer of white sunlight reflecting on the cool, dark well. I gazed at the weird asymmetries of my long ,twig-like fingers. I had always considered my pale, elongated hands the most freakish and hideous feature of my body. Hands weren't something you could hide under a long, dark overcoat. Hands were always out there. Hands always had to be used, whether you liked them or not. I had come to hate and abhor my hands, but I also knew that I was dependent on them for performing manual tasks. If it was not for this utility factor, however, I would probably have had my hands surgically removed a long time ago. The velvety, supple paws of healthy young cats were always a source of fetishistic obsession and envy. And if there was one part of my life that I really dreaded it was the little repressed gasps of horror and surprise when stranger cats saw my hands for the first time. Forever embedded painfully in my mind was the little she kitten on the Cat City Trolley that remarked to her mother,

      "Look mommy, that man has insect hands!"

It was because of my hands that I had always dreaded any event that involved public eating. Often I would just sit there with my hands at my sides neither eating nor drinking.

     I moved my fingers slowly above the shimmering ripples of the deep puddle, and they felt heavy and swollen with the painful and portentous weight of my whole existence as a snow man. A memory arose, as if from the watery depths of the puddle, and began replaying itself in my mind. It was something that happened when I was very young snow boy.

     For the first seven years of my life, my foster mother, Betty Cat, had insisted that I eat with her whole family during holiday gatherings. Betty Cat insisted on this out of love for her adopted snow boy, but it ruined the meal for everyone else. The practice finally ended one day when I was seven and Betty Cat was invited to spend Bird Feast Day with her family. The invitation pointedly did not include my name, but that only redoubled Betty Cat's righteous determination to bring me along any way. As a very young snow boy I’m not sure how conscious I was of the controversy in the family about my being included in these events, but I did feel the general atmosphere of uneasiness, and dreaded these family occasions as sessions of torturous embarrassment for everyone.

     On that particular day I had been crying alone in my room all that afternoon because I didn't want to go to the Bird Feast Day gathering. I moped under the covers all morning crying and speaking in whispers to Joey, the large fuzzy, stuffed red mouse that was the constant companion of my early years.

     "They don't like us over there, Joey. We're going to run away together." I hugged Joey tighter and large tears of melted snow dripped onto Joey's fuzzy red fur. Betty Cat yelled from the kitchen of our small house by the river. "What you be doing in there all day, Snowboy?" Betty Cat had the heavy accent of the Black River Cat family she was descended from. It had been said that her great grand father was descended from a full-blooded black alley cat. "Now you can go sulk yourself all day in there, Snowboy, but you will be going to Bird Feast Day just like any normal chi'l. And you best not be cryin' in there Snowboy. I done told you about that too many times. You know you gonna dry yourself up with all that girlie-cat cryin’ till there ain't be nothin' left of you 'cept one little snow flake dryin' itself up in the dust under dhat radiator. You hear me Snowboy?'

     "Yes, mama."

     "Now you put that Joey thing away and get yourself in your Sunday best. I wanna be proud of my Snowboy when we go to Aunt Bertha Cat's house." Betty Cat opened the door to my room and walked in with a steaming wash cloth. She rubbed my face so vigorously that it always felt like she was going to rub my snow skin off and turn me into a living snow skull boy. It was so different when I was still young enough to get my face licked.

     Slowly and sulkily I got out of bed and slugged around my room. Betty Cat yelled at me some more and with glacier like slowness I dressed myself in the brown corduroy Junior Fat Boy trousers , starchy white button down shirt and narrow red and yellow tie that Betty Cat had spent half a pension check on at The Bulging Boy---a shop that sold garments for obese Upright children. I hated the outfit, especially since it was made for Uprights. Every time I buttoned the starchy, white shirt I felt like I was putting on a strait jacket. And then there was the way those ugly black rubber suspenders hiked my pants up practically to my arm pits that made me feel like I must be the ugliest mutation in all of Annoying World.

     Finally, I had to put on the most humiliating part of my outfit, the special deformity shoes that Betty Cat had gotten for me at Henry Cat and Sons surgical Supply Store where her cousin Sugar Cat worked. They had been specially made for a kitten with splayed paw syndrome. But the kitten had died of complications before he could grow into the deformity shoes, and Henry Cat and Sons had to take a loss on them. Eventually they heavily discounted the deformity shoes and put them on the dusty black velvet display case behind the large plate glass window of their River Avenue store front next to the cervical collars and aluminum walkers. Cat children from my elementary school would sometimes go to Henry Cat and Sons to stare at the shoes and laugh at them. The large brown deformity shoes looked like a frightening hybrid of orthopedic shoes and clown feet. They flared out at the front and had all sorts of weird curves and protuberances meant to accommodate the specific deformities of the deceased kitten they had been custom made for. Along the sides of the deformity shoes were a whole grid of air holes, each reinforced by a tiny brass grommet, that were necessary to provide the proper ventilation crucial to the treatment of splayed paw syndrome. In addition to laughing at the shoes, the Cat Children would sometimes join hands in a circle and dance around singing,

     "Monster shoes! Monster shoes! Ten times uglier than a pair of doggy-do-dos!" Henry Cat or one of his sons would eventually have to go out and chase them away. Eventually they got tired of it, and decided to discount the shoes to almost nothing. When that happened Sugar cat called Betty Cat on the phone and said,

        "Betty Cat honey, you better get on down here in a lickety-split hurry, cause old Mr. Henry, done just put a pair of Cat City made shoes on sale for half the price of a bottle of flea pills. And I know they're gonna fit your Snowboy as if they was made for him special." Sugar Cat always had a particular dislike for me and was never remiss when it came to stirring up trouble. She knew very well that Betty Cat was very poor and could never miss anything she took to be a bargin.

     Later that day Betty Cat brought home the deformity shoes in a large brown box, but didn't tell me any thing about their origin, afraid that I wouldn't want to wear them if she did. And I hadn’t walked by Henry Cat and Sons Surgical Supply Store in months because it was in a shopping area where cat children from my school hung out. I knew I would be mercilessly teased and scratched by their sharp young claws if I so much as showed my snowy face there.

     Betty Cat took the shoes out of the box and started to put them on my feet. She pressed and pinched my feet real hard from the outside of the shoes before pronouncing, "These shoes be near a perfect fit for you, son. And look at how expensive Cat City made they are too!"

     "But they look kind of strange, ma. And what are all these little holes for?"

     "Oh now hush up with all your worry talk. You worry more than any old scaredy cat I ever met. You'll be worrying us both to death one of these days. Here you got yourself a brand new pair of Cat City made shoes you can be proud to wear to the first day of school tomorrow, and all you gonna do is worry yourself sick about them."

     Tearfully, I remembered that first day of school as I put on the deformity shoes. I knew that Betty Cat did things because she loved me, and sometimes all I could do is go along with her well-meaning plans, even when I knew that no good would come of them. She was, after all, an old woman cat, and it wasn't her fault that I was a freak. One day I hoped to do something great and become rich and famous. Then I would buy Betty Cat a beautiful big house with a big garden and all her favorite things.

     Finally, I was dressed and Betty Cat took my hand and we walked on the path beside the long, dark river. There was a sharp crescent moon hanging just above the bare branches of the trees. I carried an old wicker basket that held the freshly baked sardine pie that Betty Cat had made for the feast. We walked in silence for a while, and I had one of those strange deja vu moments that would come upon me at odd times and in lonely places. Time slowed and I heard the flowing of the river and the wind breathing through the tree branches. From inner depths I could feel that I was on a path, a path that was long, and dark and deep.

     When we got to Aunt Bertha's house, I tried to hide myself amidst the noise and confusion and cat chatter. Kittens were racing up and down the stairs and through the hallways, all the women cats were coming in and out of the kitchen carrying tons of food, and all the men cats were sitting around the living room smoking smelly catnip cigars and talking about sports and money. I stood in a shadowy corner by myself trying not to be noticed. But then they were ready to serve the feast and I had to sit at the table between Ellie Cat, a young she kitten around my age, and Sammy Cat, a Tom kitten a year or two older.

     The table looked like it was going to collapse with food. There was a large turkey, several quail, pigeon and sardine pies, a roast duck stuffed with mouse meat, and Aunt Bertha's speciality---young sparrow breasts tartar, sautéed in a catnip-vinaigrette dressing. I was highly allergic to all animal foods and was sickened by the sight of all the holiday foods everyone else was making such a fuss about. To me, the feast looked, and smelt, like platters of dead birds. And even if I wasn't allergic, I hated the thought of eating dead animals---it had always seemed savage and gross to me. Betty Cat always complained that my vegetarian diet would stunt my growth, but I told her I didn't care. Better to be stunted than have a body made of dead animal parts. I thought. The only thing at the whole feast I could eat was the one platter of summer grasses. This was an out of season vegetable and was either frozen or from a can so that it was soggy and looked like seaweed once it was heated. It was one of those traditional dishes that was expected to be there, but in practice no one but me actually ate it. Betty Cat passed me a big plate of summer grasses that looked like it was frozen and canned. You couldn't even make out the individual blades of grass, it was all just a big soggy mess. Greenish steam rose from the plate and smelled like old seaweed. Sammy Cat made a face and I just sat there with my hands at my sides, feeling hungry, but totally unmotivated to eat the greens. Everyone else was scarfing down tons of bird flesh, the men cats drank big mugs of sardine wine which made their breath stink of dead fish and catnip smoke. And most disgusting was the fact that they all talked with food in their mouths, chewed with their mouths wide open and ate with such noisy gusto that I felt like I was eating with a pack of starving hyenas wolfing down an especially tough carcass of raw zebra meat. The entire spectacle nauseated me, but I knew I had to sit there until the torture was over. I cast my dark eyes down at the tangled clumps of boiled grass on my plate imagining that it was a steamy, swampy jungle on another world. And that's when the incident happened.

     "Snowboy, Snowboy!" ---It took a couple of repetitions of my name for Betty Cat to get my attention. "Be a good Snowboy and pass Ellie Cat that chicken liver pot pie."I looked up and saw there was a platter of small, livery smelling pies in front of me next to a big bowl of tarry-looking mouse pudding. I reached out to the platter of liver pies like Betty Cat told me to, and as I did so, Ellie Cat, who was quite a nervous, little she kitten anyway, got a close look at my hands, and to her they looked like long, white worms. Ellie Cat emitted a piercing shriek and then threw up on her new, pink chiffon dress. Suddenly all the chewing stopped and every eye slit of every feline was focused on me.

     "What'd you do to her Snowboy?" demanded Buck Cat, Ellie Cat's father. I looked around and saw the hateful accusing eyes glaring at me, and suddenly the whole family looked to me like a pack of predatory animals, savage and alien, and I let out a scream of pure terror, a scream of shattering psionic intensity that broke glass in houses half a block away. Bird Feast Day was ruined and Betty Cat ended up blamed and ostracized for bringing me.

     Something died in Betty Cat that night. She would always love her snow boy and think of me as the kitten God gave her when she was too old to have a litter, but her hopes that I would be accepted by the family were put to rest. There were many hysterical phone calls in the ensuing weeks when Ellie Cat stopped eating anything and eventually had to be hospitalized. Buck Cat and Missy Cat blamed it all on me, and, by implication, on Betty Cat for bringing me. For a time it seemed like no one in the family was going to speak to Betty Cat.

     Ellie Cat eventually got better, but I was never taken to another family gathering. I began to feel nervous even eating in front of Betty Cat and would take my meals alone in my room. I would push my school papers aside and use my desk as a dining table. Sometimes I would put Joey on a chair next to me and talk to him during meals. Later in life, as an adult, I would always eat alone in my room at the boarding house. Mostly I heated up canned goods on a hot plate and ate out of the battered tin sauce pan that had belonged to Betty Cat before she passed away.

     The memories ebbed away and I still stared at my hands hovering over the silvery ripples of the deep puddle. Somehow I had survived all that painful past and was still here. And now I saw my hands as if for the first time. The weird asymmetries looked purposefully complex, like the elegant brush strokes of oriental characters, or the intricate wards of a pair of uncanny, living skeleton keys. I saw now that there was something strangely powerful and intelligent about my hands. These hands were designed for some great and unknown purpose. I thought. And if these hands are not meant to caress the lustrous black and orange of Jamie cat's fur then I will find the key hole that they are meant to unlock, whether it be flesh or some unformed destiny on some other plane.

     I dipped my hands into the cool, dark water. Deep within I heard the luscious inner tinkling of the dry ice crystals as their capillary osmosis sent streams of replenishing moisture through out my whole body. I scooped up double handfuls of water and doused my head, cooling liquid passing through my brain and blood shot eyes leaving them clear and refreshed. My body felt new made as the water flowed to my extremities, filling out my muscles and renewing every living crystal. I knelt beside the pool for a while feeling the life-giving moisture coursing through all my snow tissues. When at last I stood up I seemed to tower over Eddie Cat, and my rehydrated body almost welcomed the heat of the white sun.

     We walked a little ways further down the road before noticing a side path. "Ah, here's the cut off to the Admiral Black Paw Inn." said Eddie Cat, pointing toward a dirt path that cut through the weed field. It was a dirt path, but the sides were bordered with cobblestones. We walked down the path and soon came upon the Inn, a two story structure of weathered stone and wood. The windows were of an old fashioned sort with thick diamond shaped pieces of colored glass connected with lead solder. Surrounding the inn were well-tended vegetable gardens where many fine varieties of catnip and grasses were growing as well a number of tall sun flowers. The air was filled with the intoxicating minty smell of thriving catnip plants. The rear of the inn overlooked the dark waters of Voyage Bay, and a stone path led down to a wooden dock where a single schooner was tied in.

     Eddie Cat knocked on the door and we were greeted by Jimmy Cat, a handsome young boy cat with alert and respectful green eyes and neat, tabby-stripped fur.

     "Good evening, Sir Snowman and Sir Eddie Cat, welcome to the Admiral Black Paw Inn." Jimmy Cat had perfect manners and had been brought up to speak formally and with the greatest respect to all the guests. We stepped into the common room which had dark mahogany paneling and heavy wooden tables.

       "Actually, the Snowman is now to be referred to as the Jake" said Eddie Cat.

     "That's Jake, not the Jake." I corrected. Jimmy Cat looked a little confused. "Oh forget it," I said. "I'll keep my original name. You can call me the Snowman."

     "Yes, Sir Snowman." said Jimmy Cat. "Would you gentleman care for any refreshment after your long journey?”

     "Yes we would." said Eddie Cat. Jimmy Cat showed us to a table beside a window with a view of the garden. He told us about the daily specials and gave us menus printed on old parchment paper. Jimmy Cat brought us a large pitcher of iced catnip tea while we considered which of the Inn specialties would please us most. When we had decided, Jimmy Cat took our order and disappeared into the kitchen. In a short time he returned with another large pitcher of iced catnip tea, followed by chilled cream soup and fresh red snapper for Eddie Cat, and for me a plate of steamed, seasoned summer grasses, squash and potatoes---all fresh from the garden.

     After we finished this excellent meal, Jimmy Cat offered us hand made catnip cigars from a polished wooden box, and pastel colored after dinner mints shaped like anchors on a red glass dish. Eddie Cat took a catnip cigar, and Jimmy Cat immediately lighted it for him. I politely refused the cigar but eventually ate all of the after dinner mints. It was against a Puddle Town ordinance to offer guests intoxicating spirits, but it was permissible to have written advertisements, and to serve anything that guests asked for. The Admiral Black Paw Inn was especially well known for its fine variety of home made sardine and catnip wines and their special Quest Rum. Eddie Cat ordered a flagon of catnip wine for himself and a large mug of Quest Rum for me. We sipped our drinks as the setting sun cast roseate rays through the diamond shaped panes of glass. Jimmy Cat lit candles and began a fire in the fire place.

     "Jimmy Cat, that was a fine meal." said Eddie Cat.

     "And your Quest Rum is a most excellent beverage." I added, raising my second mug.

     "Quite true," said Eddie Cat, "but no finer than your catnip wine which is a vintage of surpassing excellence. I'm wondering, if you have a moment to spare from your evening chores, what news you can give us of comings and goings at the Inn and whether there are any quests or great journeys happening that you are aware of." Eddie Cat patted the seat beside him.

     "Thank you, sir ." said Jimmy Cat seating himself on the indicated chair.

     "And, by the way, how is your respected father, Stanley Cat?"

     "He's taken to his sick bed, sir."

     "It's nothing serious, I hope."

     "I'm afraid it is, sir. Doctor Lindsay Cat says he fears that the end is at hand." Replied Jimmy Cat with tears in his young, green eyes.

     "I'm so sorry to hear that." said Eddie Cat.

      "I'm so sorry to hear that too." I said awkwardly but with real empathy. Jimmy Cat had impressed me with his serious, respectful manner so unusual in a boy cat his age. We were all silent for a few moments.

     "There have been some strange occurrences here." said Jimmy Cat, remembering his duty to report on the news. "A fortnight ago we were visited by the Old Woman of the Cards."

     "The Old Woman of the Cards!" exclaimed Eddie Cat. "She lives? I heard of her as a kitten and even then I thought her to be nothing more than an old legend."

     "Aye, she lives, sir. But she be very, very old indeed. She knocked on our door these fourteen days past." said Jimmy Cat in a hushed tone. "I was the only one awake. At first I took her to be some sort of gnome mutant, so shrunken she was, and hidden within her red hooded cloak. I invited her inside and saw that she was covered with the dust of many leagues of travel. She was very tired and I brought her biscuits and rum coffee. She spoke in so creaky a voice that I had to struggle to make out her words. It seemed as if she were in a trance and she spoke as one who walks in their sleep."

     ‘Young boy.’ She said. ‘Honest, and steadfast young boy. Your heart be true so I come to tell you of strange events that draw near your inn. The cards have spoken to me and you must expect strange guests who arrive for an unknown purpose of great import.’ She drew out a card and laid it flat on the table beside the plate of biscuits. The card showed what looked like an Upright boy standing on a dark hill holding a silvery dagger up to the moonlight. ‘A young prince travels here from afar, another world, another time.’ She drew another card that showed an unformed Upright man hanging upside down from a rope attached to a yellow door frame. ‘A mutation, powerful and in conflict within himself, will follow. These guests will be strangers to each other, yet before one moon has passed over your roof they will embark on a quest together.‘ Her eyes were upon me and I felt my body tremble as she gazed into me. ‘Give all possible aid to this endeavor, young Jimmy Cat, for you are fated to be a servant to strange forces at work in the cosmos. The cards have spoken...’

     And with that the Old Woman of the Cards swept the cards away with her bony paw, stood up and wrapped her cloak about her. I begged her to let me make up a bed for her so that she could rest herself before she set out on the long and wearisome road, but she didn't even look in my direction as she headed for the door. The door closed behind her and that be the last I've seen of the old woman. But three days later, on a windy evening, there was another knock on the door.

     I opened the door and there stood a mutation I supposed he was, but of a sort I've never heard of. In outward form he was alike an Upright youth, yet he was not an Upright, or not like any Upright I've ever heard of. His ears were slightly pointed, his hair was dark and silken and his eyes were grey-green and far-seeing. And all about him was an uncanny feeling, a feeling of magic and strangeness. It seemed as if he glowed with an inner light and were not of this world. He wore a dark hooded cloak and about his waist was a beautiful dagger. I remembered the card of the young prince that the Old Lady of the Cards had drawn. I could see that her prophecy was coming true for here was surely the young prince from afar, 'another time, another world' as she had said.

     He spoke to me, sirs, with a voice that was flowing, almost like a song, and when he looked into my eyes, time seemed to slow and I could see that his heart was true and good. 

     'My name is Jeremiah. I need food and lodging. I can pay these.'

     From a small bag he removed three beautiful gold coins and handed them to me. I've never seen such a coin before or since sir. On one side was a tree with many branches before the crescent of an old moon. On the other was a symbol of some sort I've never seen." Jimmy Cat reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a shimmering gold disc. He put it on the table before us. My eyes opened as I stared at the uncanny beauty of the coin. The engraving on its surface showed every texture of the tree's bark with detail that was far beyond ordinary eyesight. There was something about this coin that was different than any object I could ever remember seeing. It had a feeling of unequaled quality, and there was something about the complex shape of the tree that seemed so inevitable, so familiar. On the other side of the coin was a single rune. I felt that I should know the meaning of the rune---it's flowing lines hung in my mind even as my eyes looked away from it.

     "These are strange tidings, indeed, Jimmy Cat." I said trying my best to imitate the local dialect. "Something is happening. Can you tell us more about this Jeremiah?"

     "No sir. He has a corner room that faces the water. He comes and goes but we catch scarcely a glimpse of him. He has the gift of stealth says my mother. Stealth beyond even feline stealth."

     "I believe we will see him soon." I said with an inner sense of knowing. "I feel there is a powerful inevitability to these occurrences. The old woman read the cards well. Could you show me to my room, Jimmy Cat?" I looked at Eddie Cat. "I hope you don't mind, but I feel I must be by myself for a while." Jimmy Cat got up at once. We went upstairs to the room and Jimmy Cat gave me the key.

     I unlocked the door and went inside. The room was simple with the moon visible through a porthole-shaped window near the ceiling. There was a larger window of clear diamond-shaped panes that caught the moonlight reflecting on the rippling water of Voyage Bay. Jimmy Cat pulled back bedcovers and fluffed the fine feather pillows.

     But at that moment ,a middle aged woman cat, obviously Jimmy cat's mother, showed up. She wore a shabby house dress and had a face that looked very worn and cross.

     “Jimmy Cat, would you come here please.” She sounded angry and irritable and glared suspiciously in my direction. Jimmy Cat went to her. In a hissing whisper, that was perfectly audible across the room, she scolded Jimmy Cat, "What's the matter with you letting such a horrible mutation into the Inn? Do you think we're running a flop house for reality distorted freaks? And you served him food and drink! What do you suppose our neighbors and customers would say? How many times have I told you that mutations belong with their own kind and not in a respectable business. What are you thinking boy?: Do you want to bring disgrace and ruin down on us? Do you want us to be penniless on the street? It would be bad enough if this were an ordinary mutation, but this, this thing, you let in... Just you wait till I tell your poor, sick father. God only knows what kind of diseases or parasites its harboring. We'll have to pay hundreds of credit units to have the whole room fumigated. Have you taken leave of your senses, are you utterly determined to see us ruined? Send it away at once and throw out the food and scrub the plates while I talk to your father about your punishment. And don't you dare ever, ever to think of doing such a foolish thing again or I'll box your ears into bloody stumps."

     How I wanted to scratch at her eyes and in my mind I called her all sorts of names, old dish rag, puss head, lice pussy, dung cat, freak bitch and the like, but I didn't want to embarrass young Jimmy Cat who had been so nice to me.

      I felt in the inside pocket of my over coat and found that I had a few of the rectangular plastic wafers that would be accepted as currency in Cat City or almost anywhere in Annoying World. The mother withdrew and Jimmy Cat turned to me with a very chagrined expression on his innocent, young face.

      “Sir, please don’t be offended by my mother’s harsh words. She has not been herself since my poor father has taken ill. We-“ But I waved away Jimmy Cat’s apologies.

     “None of this is your fault, Jimmy Cat, and I am all too familiar with how people can react to mutants. I’m only sorry that I have made trouble for you and I can easily find lodging elsewhere. I will be off momentarily, but there is one great service you can do for me if you are willing.”

     “Please sir,” replied Jimmy Cat with sincerity, “I would like to help in any way that I can.” Acting from pure intuition I whispered to him confidentially,

     “The next time you see this strange prince, Jeremiah, as he called himself, please tell him that you have seen a living snow man and that I have gone on to Cat City. He can find me there if he wishes. Also, don’t mention anything about my departure to Sir Eddie Cat until tomorrow morning.”

     “Certainly, sir.” Said Jimmy Cat, and he led me down a back stair case so that I could make my departure anonymously. But before I set off, he insisted on giving me a large paper mug of the excellent Quest Rum, and a small paper sack filled with the anchor shaped pastel mints to, ‘lighten my spirits for the long evening walk,’ as he put it. I thanked him profusely for his consideration and set off on the long walk to Cat City.

     I walked a long way down the road before I saw the distant lights of Cat City ahead of me. I sipped Quest Rum, ate mints, and my heart felt lightened by Jimmy Cat’s kind treatment of me. My mind pondered the strange prophecies of the Old Woman of the Cards, the beautiful golden coin, and the mysterious Jeremiah.

     After a while I found myself under the lime green blinking neon sign of the Mutant Motel, a squalid little establishment on the outskirts of Cat City. It was a depressing contrast to the rustic charm of the Admiral Black Paw Inn. A grimy sign on the door said "Since N171 Providing Quality Lodgings for Guests of the Reality Challenged Persuasion."

     The night shift motel clerk was an ugly old tom cat wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt. He was watching hugely obese mesomorphic tom cats wrestling on a cheap black and white television. I stood there for several long seconds before the clerk bothered to look up and glare at me with open suspicion. He had a foul- smelling catnip stogie in his mouth. It was slimy with saliva and looked like a tube of dog shit. He didn't even bother taking it out of his mouth when he spoke.

     "Can I help you?" His tone was surly and lethargic.

     "I want a room." I told him with cold terseness.

     "Credit wafer." replied the clerk, his mouth slobbering the stogie. He tapped on the counter with his claws to indicate that I should put my credit wafer on the counter. I slapped it down and looked about the dingy motel office while the clerk shuffled some papers. All the while the wrestling cats on the television set were grunting and cursing in the background.

     There were wire racks in the motel office that offered a very limited selection of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks. I found a big twenty-eight ounce cellophane bag of Hungry Tom Cat barbecue-flavored Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack capsules. It wasn’t my favorite flavor, but I could get twice as much for my money than if I bought the little twelve ounce packages. Collecting dust on another shelf were some mutant specialty drinks including a liter bottle of Snow Comfort. I put the bottle and the cellophane bag on the counter next to my credit card.

     “And these." The clerk looked at me spitefully, as if he knew I were buying these items just to make more work for him. While he rang me up a slimy thread of catnip stained saliva descended from his mouth onto my card wafer. I felt a distinct urge to wrap my thin and twig-like, but ever so strong mutant hands around the Clerk's throat and squeeze him until his eyes popped out. The clerk ran my credit wafer through a slot. Several seconds later there was a loud beep.

     "Declined." said the clerk triumphantly. I slapped down another credit wafer and could see the clerk’s annoyance when it went through. He handed it back with a greasy plastic access card. "Room 101." slobbered the clerk and immediately he went back to watching wrestling on the little television set.

     Alone in my room, I lay on the uncomfortable bed watching the pale green neon ghost of the motel sign throbbing on and off on the ceiling. Compulsively, I began eating my way through the bag of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks, the sweetened artificial barbecue flavor mixing unpleasantly with gulps of Snow Comfort. I didn’t feel buzzed at all, only extremely tired but unable to sleep. Bitter, bitter thoughts about Jamie Cat, which I had managed to put out of my mind for a while, came back with a vengeance.

     Jamie Cat. Jamie Cat. Somewhere she was feeding all her life energy, and all the moist, warm treasures of her body to Tony Cat who was lapping them up with smug satisfaction. How ludicrous and pathetic was the idea that she would ever consider me anything but an annoying and loathsome mutation, an icky, freakish thing to roll her eyes at as she and her cool tom cat boyfriend Tony Cat walked down the street together.

      Why shouldn't she think that when it is all too true? I thought writhing on the uncomfortable motel mattress. I felt nauseous thinking about my ugly snow body sagging on the plastic urine-smelling mattress.

     Various dark thoughts and fantasies made a grotesque parade through my mind. I thought about breaking the motel mirror and slashing my wrists with broken mirror fragments. I saw Jamie Cat watching me being carried out dead on a stretcher. Then she'll be sorry. I thought. Then she'll realize who really loved her. I ate and drank and felt my head swim feverishly with sugar and alcohol. Attempting to escape my inner chaos I turned on the motel television.

     On the TV a luscious young she cat and her tom cat boy friend stood rubbing each other, their tails entwined. Their excited purring was amplified as they took drags from Lover Cat catnip cigarettes. The she cat was calling her boyfriend, "Ace,” and he was calling her, "my sweet fur thing." I changed the channel in disgust. The Play Cat channel was on and I saw a big stud cat mounting a svelte she cat with big staring eyes and a wet, pink tongue. Next was a music video channel that was featuring the insinuating voice and pelvic gyrations of Electro-Star Tom Cat, the new singer that all the young she cats were fawning over. Resentfully, I remembered that Jamie Cat had all of Electro-Star Tom Cat's CDs and a huge poster of him hanging up in her room. There was the sound of his unctuous singing and shots of Electro-Star Tom Cat riding a motorcycle dressed all in leather and studs, then a shot of him dancing in a disgustingly pelvic matter surrounded by spotlights and screaming young she cats with dilated eyes, then a shot of him pouncing on a big terrified mouse and biting its head off with one bite. I changed the channel and took another hand full of Turbo Sugar with a chaser slug of Snow Comfort. The seductive eyes of a luscious she cat were on the tube staring right at me,

     “Hey you,” she whispered looking right at me. “Yes you” I glanced nervously around to see if there was anyone else in the room, “No, I mean you.” and she pointed a graceful paw at me, “You big boy cat.” she said coquettishly, “Oh you're such a big boy cat you're getting me so excited. You know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to you, you big studley Tom muffin. It's me, Honey Cat and I know who I'm talking to. You come on down and see me, see me tonight, I'm waiting for you. You know what my number is. Come on down to Adventure Cat City I'll be waiting for you at 900 Pussy Plaza. Oh don't make me wait for you, oh, oh....” She faded out and a slick announcers voice came on:

     “Are you just lying around in front of the TV stuffing your face? You could be getting down at Adventure Cat City and winning the race! Hey you, don't put up with a reality that’s shitty. You could be hanging with the girlie cats at Adventure Cat City! “ “Adventure Cat City” flashed stroboscopically in bright purple against a hot pink background. Then there was a shot of the Adventure Cat City Casino which was shaped like a giant mouse with red neon eyes. Nearby was the Adventure Cat City Lounge which was shaped like a giant pie-shaped slice of Swiss cheese next to the mouse. “Oceans of liquor! Hot slots and even hotter girlie cats!” blinked the TV.

     I watched the ads with cynical disgust. No sleazy profit-making fat cats were going to make money off of my misery. Oh Jamie Cat. I ate another handful of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snack Barbecue and felt myself getting older and weaker, felt all the refined sugar drying out my snow crystals, vital moisture being replaced by a perfumed syrup of chemicals. Somewhere, Jamie Cat was sleeping on a bed in Tony Cat's arms and my whole being writhed in the agony of this possibility. Heart beat by heart beat I felt the separation from Jamie Cat and how her energy was being blissfully given to Tony Cat, while I was left in despair, gnawing sugar capsules alone on my urine-smelling motel mattress. Again I thought of the mirror, thought of breaking it into sharp shards of glass and cutting myself with them, cutting myself until all the moisture ran out of my body, cutting myself not to make Jamie Cat sorry, but as an act of mercy, the only way I could think to end the suffering that stretched out the moments so that each blink of the motel's neon sign was an eternity of darkness.

     In counter rhythm to the throb of the neon was the throbbing of the television, "Hot slots and even hotter girlie cats!" still blinking hypnotically above the Cat City Casino. Finally they changed the image and a new slogan started blinking, "Win Big! And have it all!" There was a short video clip that showed a middle aged, out of shape Tom in shabby clothes playing a slot. The cylinders of the slot spun and with a cash register clang stopped to reveal a row of six red mice. The machine began vomiting an impossible torrent of huge gold coins. Then there was a picture of the same tom, but now he was at the wheel of a big, white yacht, his gut bulging beneath a colorful Bermuda shirt. He had a cocktail glass in one hand, smoked a big fat catnip cigar and wore one of those cheesy, fake yachtsman caps. Luscious young she-cats in bikini bathing suits were all around him and one of them was unzipping his fly and winking at the camera with a big mouse-eating grin. "Win big and have it all!" blinked the TV.

     Half heartedly, I fantasized about winning big at the casino. I could roll up to Jamie Cat in a big stretch limousine and give her a diamond bracelet. I could buy her anything. But that would never buy her love I realized, at best it would only make her a prostitute. I saw Jamie Cat bringing the diamond bracelet, and a bunch of loot home to Tony Cat and them both laughing and laughing. Jamie Cat would go into the bathroom and disgustedly spit out a few snow crystals and gargle with antiseptic mouthwash. Then she'd come out and party with Tony Cat all night. The thought made me nauseous and I took another shot of Snow Comfort to calm myself.

     Somehow the additional dose of alcohol ignited a flash of survival instinct, a fight back response. I realized that I was wallowing in potentially suicidal self pity and that I had to take an action of some sort. I sat up on the motel bed and resolved to check out of the Mutant Motel and, for reasons I was not quite clear about, to travel to Adventure Cat City.



     Adventure Cat City was not a real city of course; it was merely the red light district of Cat City, a garish night time world of pornography, prostitution and every other sort of vice you might expect. The streets were lined with massage parlors, catnip bars and the so called “chop shops” where aging tom cats could hunt mice that had been fattened and given drugs to slow their reflexes. I passed by “Pussy Galore” a gigantic adult cat video store that claimed to be have the world’s largest collection of videos depicting cats doing just about anything to other cats. I passed “Rhodeo,” a gay bar and dance club where dangerous looking Toms in leather motorcycle outfits stood out front looking for trouble. There was the “Pink Pussy” a transvestite night club where gigantic, statuesque he-she cats passed out flyers advertising their variety shows.

     Sleaze and decadence called from every angle of Adventure Cat City, but I felt strangely comfortable here, it was the anything goes part of town, the one place where no one would pass judgment on me for being a mutation. At one point I saw a female mutation that looked like a gigantic three-headed ostrich. Each of her three faces bore a striking resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt. Her eyes were kindly, world-weary and old, but she was tricked out incongruously in heavily spiked black leather and chains. Scarcely anyone raised an eyebrow. Instinctively, I felt a strong affinity with this creature, and acting on an intuitive impulse I decided to and ask her for advice.

     “Excuse me madam, but I am somewhat unfamiliar with this part of town and wonder if you could recommend an establishment appropriate to a mutation in my situation?” This was obviously a very poor question, since it wasn’t necessarily apparent what my situation was, but this mutation had faces that seemed so kind and understanding that I felt it would be all right to ask her anything.

     “Hmmm, let’s see now, an appropriate establishment…” The creature had a pleasing, if somewhat falsetto, motherly voice, but a peculiar way of speaking. The middle head did all the real speaking, and the side heads filled up the pauses with a chorus of repetitive phrases such as, “Oh my-oh my-oh my, yes- yes- yes” and “I see-I see-I see.” “An appropriate establishment—oh my-oh my, yes-yes, I see-I see, well I suppose that depends on what sort of diversion or service you might be looking for. Are there any sort of particulars you require?” I thought for a moment,
     “Well., let’s see, I’ve been feeling very poorly about an unrequited love affair and I’d like some sort of adventure that would take my mind off of it, but I need to stay somewhere in the Adventure City/Cat City area as I am expecting another party to come find me here eventually.”

     ”Oh my-oh my, yes-yes-yes, I see-I see-I see. I should think you might find what you are looking for at the Adventure Store, which is just another two blocks down this side of Broadway.”

     I walked a short distance down Broadway and found myself standing before a run down-looking store front with a sign that said, “THE ADVENTURE STORE----YOUR PORTAL TO ADVENTURE.” Beneath the painted sign was a partly broken pink neon sign that blinked, “MORE REAL THAN R A .” A worn out tape recorded voice droned the same message, "....MORE REAL THAN REAL MORE REAL THAN REAL MORE REAL THAN REAL..." endlessly from a bull horn over the door. This all seemed depressingly mundane, and yet I had another of those strange deja vu moments. It felt like someone was walking over the grave of long buried memories.

     Feeling these presentiments, I walked in. A young, thin Upright man with very pale complexion and spiked florescent magenta hair sat behind a glass counter filled with boxes of Turbo Sugar Skin Popper Snacks and drink boxes of Turbo Sugar Speedo Rush Lite and similar beverages. He wore wrap around mirrored sunglasses, a shirt brilliant with colors, and headphones. He didn’t seem to notice me at all. His head was bobbing and weaving to music from the headphones and he was sucking on a drink box of Turbo Sugar Speedo Rush Ultra Max. The colorful shirt he wore was glossy and had detailed comic book scenes printed on it. All the scenes showed a part man, part machine cyborg built on an heroic scale with bulging metal or protein muscles---it was hard to tell---and all sorts of heavy metal protuberances and integrated armor and weapons. His face was completely hidden behind a black breath mask. In each of the scenes the cyborg was having sex in a different position with a helpless looking thin, pale Upright girl barely pubescent, with big terrified eyes. A huge advertising button on his shirt pocket read,

     "More Real, Than Real Laser Shirts 
     You Design. 
     Wear Your Favorite Moments. 
     29.95 Credit Units."

     I stood right in front of him, but he still gave no hint that he noticed me, his head bobbing and weaving to a pulsating rhythm. I took out a credit wafer and without the slightest break in his rhythm he passed it through a credit reader and announced,

     “Bed Seven.”

I glanced behind him and saw there was a plaster board hallway with numbered doors.

     I walked down the hallway with the depressed certainty that what I had paid for was nothing more than a tanning salon session. Perhaps this was how the three-headed mutant interpreted “an establishment appropriate to a mutation in my situation.” A memory resurfaced of a time when I had bought a tanning package. It was when I first met Jamie Cat and I naively thought I could get somewhere with her by improving my pale complexion. The tanning salon looked very similar except that it had fading posters of tropical islands taped up everywhere.

     I opened door number seven and found myself in a cramped plaster board room with a single light bulb dangling from a wire. The only thing in the room was what appeared to be a battered sarcophagus-like tanning bed. There was the sickening, acrid smell of Upright perspiration. A torn paper sign entitled, “More Real Than Real Rules and Regulations” was taped to one of the plaster boards There were six consecutively numbered items:

1. Remove all jewelry and metal appliances.

2. Disrobe completely.

3. Not recommended for pregnant women, people with heart conditions, liver disease, retroviruses, parasitic infections, mutation formations, bodily fluids, DNA or fluid filled cell structures.

4. Obtain permission from your health net. More Real Than Real accepts no responsibility or liability. Use at your own risk.

5. Orgasm Tax (There were several numbers crossed out with black magic marker, and a final uncrossed out number---“23.85 credit units”)

6. Absolutely no refunds.

     I wasn’t sure what to make of all the rules and regulations but supposed that they were local tanning regulations. I wasn’t very interested in tanning, but I realized there were no refunds and felt determined to get my credit units worth. I turned the little knob on the door knob and tested it to make sure it was locked. I hated the thought of anyone seeing me in my bare snow. I disrobed and lay down on the bed. The smell of Upright perspiration was nauseating. Then there was a pneumatic sound and the bed closed in on me. There was darkness, not a glimmer of ultraviolet, and I became alarmed. My snow skin felt prickly all over and I tried to scream, but found my body was completely paralyzed, I couldn't even blink my eyes. There was a feeling of fur, warm wet fur touching every part of my body. I felt like I was inside the womb of some huge animal. But then I felt electricity flowing into me from the fur and realized that what I thought was fur were really microscopic electro-conductive filaments of some sort, and the wetness was some sort of electrolytic fluid. There was another pneumatic sound and I felt fluids being pumped into my Snow tissues. I blacked out for a moment and regained consciousness in a space of florescent pink.

XIII

     I was tumbling weightlessly in a universe of undifferentiated florescent pink. The perspiration smell was completely gone and was replaced by a distinctly recognizable Turbo Sugar Power Wad Pink Bubble Gum smell. It was quite pleasurable and I felt my breathing slowing down and my whole body relaxing. My mind felt blank and I was completely relaxed when a flash of lightening, powerful beyond imagining, shattered the pink universe into tiny globules of pink that flashed away like a comet and left me tumbling in outer space. Stars burned in the black emptiness. Then there was another devastating flash of lightening and an enormous stone tablet came hurtling toward me. It seemed about to crush me, but halted right before my face. The tablet was ringed with fire and had chiseled Romanesque lettering on it that read, "NO REFUNDS" Then there was another great burst of lightening and the tablet shattered into cosmic dust. After the third bolt there was a moment of absolute silence and then from inside my head a voice occurred, a super-amplified voice of power with an echo effect that made all my crystals resonate.

"TURBO SUGAR CORPORATION IN LEVERAGED ASSOCIATION WITH TURBO GOD-X SYNERGISTICS, GENESIS-ZEUS TURBO GRAPHICS AND NEXUS DEUTERONOMY NEUROPHARMACEUTICALS PRESENTS--- TURBO REALITY---NEURAL NET RELEASE TWO THOUSAND TWELVE--- IN DOLBY PROSYNAPTICAL SURROUND SENSE."

     There was a loud tearing sound, space somehow tore open and I found myself free falling toward a huge city of staggering complexity with moving metal buildings and superstructures and self-transforming building sized machines. There was movement and complexity beyond what my mind could possibly comprehend, and my mutant panoramic vision staggered my snow brain with an impossible upload of visual information.

     My free falling slowed to a gentle landing on an empty street. The street was curiously still and a striking contrast to all the complex movement and self- transforming machinery I had seen from above. The buildings on the street were tall, but windowless and empty. Many had huge holes where they had been hit by mortar shells and millions of small holes from automatic weapons fire penetrated everything. The ground was strewn with chunks of concrete, shell casings, and metal fragments. A pile of charred Upright limbs smoldered next to a burnt out artillery gun and a dark plumb of acrid smoke from the flesh fire drifted down the avenue.

     I felt disoriented and nauseated by the charred flesh smell of the smoke. Slowly, I rose to my knees and found I was clothed in plain gray coveralls. Before I could stand and get my bearings there was a crashing sound and a terrible vibration that shook ground and buildings. It felt like an earthquake, and in another couple of seconds there was another dreadful crash and shaking. I trembled on my knees and put my hands over my head as the crashes continued at regular intervals growing louder and more violent.
 
     Looking out from between my fingers, I saw that a titanic behemoth was approaching with fat legs of pink flesh at least sixty stories high. I looked up and saw that the legs belonged to what appeared to be a giant infant approximately two hundred meters high wearing a white diaper, a black eye patch and wielding an enormous two bladed battle ax. The infant was slicing the air with the battle ax with the speed and agility of a Samurai. Buildings were falling to pieces from the vibrations as the infant approached and enormous chunks of concrete came crashing down, threatening to crush me. The Infant halted before me and trembling with fright, I looked up at the white diaper that filled the sky like a giant cloud above me. The diaper puffed out so much that it was impossible to see the head or upper torso. A voice rang out that seemed to make the whole city shake with its power.

     "PREPARE TO FIGHT NEW BOY." There was a swooshing sound and the battle ax came slicing down through the air bringing a curved razor edge fifty meters across within a centimeter of my face.

     "But I don't want to fight." I gasped in a comparatively tiny voice.

     "You don't?" suddenly there was a pale, large eyed boy sitting in front of me wearing faded rags. There was no sign of the terrible infant anywhere except for the huge foot print holes in the street. The boy was small, but good looking, with large, intelligent gray eyes.

     "You really don't want to fight?" the boy had a British accent.

     "No, why would I want to fight?" I asked.

     "Everybody else wants to fight." said the boy. "Everybody wants to fight or do the sexy stuff or fight and do the sexy stuff together. It's quite boring really. Why'd you pick a snowman as a character? What sort of a powers do you have? I never heard of anyone being a snowman before." The boy seemed friendly and curious.

     "It's not a character, this is who I really am." I replied.

     "What? That's ridiculous." The boy replied contemptuously. "I hope you don't expect me to believe that. Nobody comes to Turbo Sugar World as who they really are. Besides, there's no such thing as a living snowman. Is this some sort of trap or surprise attack? Try anything and I'll be Baby Blaster again in half a nanosecond."

     "Who's 'Baby Blaster'?" I asked.

     "One of my characters, of course, you retard. Are you still trying to play that you're not a character."

     "I'm a mutation. I was born this way."

     "Very funny. So funny, I forgot to laugh. I'll prove you're a character." The boy took something out of his pocket, a plastic scanner of some sort that made a humming sound as he made a quick pass with it a few inches from my face. The boys eyes widened and he sat back and stared at me with astonishment. "Holy weird!" He put the scanner back in his pocket. "Holy, holy weird....I thought I'd seen everything down here." Said the boy. "How'd you get here?"

     "I was in a place that I thought was a tanning salon and—“ He cut me off impatiently.

     "The neural web doesn't let anyone through as themselves. It filters anything organic. You must be such an extreme mutation that it didn't recognize you as a living thing. That is whacked. I can't believe how whacked that is." He kept staring at me.

     "What's your name?" I asked.

     "Oliver." said the boy "Oliver Twister."

     "Is that your real name?" I asked.

     "Of course it's not my real name!" said the boy. "It's my character name. But Oliver Twister is my main character and he's the same age as my body. C'mon, let's get out of here before someone wants to fight or do the sexy stuff to us." I got up and followed Oliver Twister across the street.

     "Wait a minute." I said thinking of something. "If I'm here as myself how come I'm wearing these gray coveralls? I lay down on that bed naked and I've never owned a pair of gray coveralls."

     "Well Turbo Sugar World isn't going to let you come through naked, you know." said Oliver Twister.

     "Why not?" I asked.

"It's against the Family Value Code." said Oliver Twister impatiently as we walked past the still smoldering pile of charred limbs.

     "But then why do they allow the sexy stuff?" I asked. He seemed exasperated with my naiveté.

     "I don't know. Why is the sky gray? It's always been that way." said Oliver Twister.

     I followed Oliver into a long dark alley, our footsteps echoing off walls of dark concrete. Oliver turned toward me and seemed about to say something, but I was suddenly jolted by a terrifically loud beeping sound in my ears. Oliver looked at me with alarm,

     “You’re about to get yanked off the TSW, mate.” He said.

Oliver and the alley blurred and became two dimensional and frozen. I saw the words, “ILLEGAL OPERATION. EVENT TERMINATED AT 023.0032” and blacked out.

XIV

     I regained awareness in time to hear the pneumatic sound of the sarcophagus like bed opening up and revealing the plaster board bareness of room number seven. I staggered down the hallway where the young Upright man was still bobbing and weaving rhythmically. He handed me my credit wafer and I walked back out into the nocturnal streets of Adventure Cat City.

     My head was spinning and I felt highly disoriented. The effect was like emerging from a gut wrenchingly emotional movie only to find yourself back in the very same movie theater parking lot as if nothing had happened. I felt that Oliver Twister was about to tell me something very important just at the moment I was “yanked from the TSW” as he put it. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

     In a daze I walked down Broadway with no very clear purpose or destination. Vaguely, I realized that I was still being effected by all the neuropharmecuticals that had been pumped into me. Since my descent into the web had been prematurely terminated, all the chemicals were still percolating at peak levels in my brain. Time slowed and drunken groups of boisterous party cats seemed to float by amid pulses of colored light from store fronts, clubs and bars. The bright lights left ghostly trails in my visual perception and all the sharp edges blurred as if I were underwater. I felt strangely detached from my surroundings and scarcely noticed as I left the garish color of the Adventure Cat City area and strayed into the dark, desolate streets of an industrial area of Cat City. 


     I liked the darkness, it relaxed my over wrought nervous system and sometimes I even closed my eyes as I drifted down street after street. I felt myself being drawn toward a certain quarter, and allowed myself to flow in that direction. I crossed old rail road tracks and the terrain became more weedy and less industrial. The neuropharmecuticals seemed to have enhanced my psionic powers and I partly glided as I walked and my chakras pulsated with colored light deep within my snow tissues.

     I walk-glided down an old dirt logging road, dark woods on either side of me, and felt myself drawing closer to a presence, a presence that had attracted me faintly, almost unconsciously from Adventure Cat City, but now seemed far stronger and more magnetic. It guided me gently, drew me deeper and deeper into the dark woods. No hint of menace troubled me, and I allowed myself to flow toward the center of magnetism. I felt it pulling me as if my snow crystals were made of iron and there was a powerful lodestone hidden in the depths of the forest.

     The logging road had become an over grown trail and coniferous trees scented the darkness. The lights of the city were far away and the faint illumination of a crescent moon barely penetrated tree branches thick with green needles. Psionic power was ever so gradually increasing as I drew near the hidden lodestone and effortless gliding overtook any semblance of walking.

     I could hear the sound of a stream now, though the woods were too dark for me to see it. My snow tissues felt the increased moisture in the air and the relaxing rhythm of crickets blended with the sound of clear water flowing over smooth pebbles.

     I came over a very slight ridge and could see a small orange yellow light off in the woods toward my right. This was also the direction of the lodestone and I allowed its attractive magic to draw me off the trail. I glided soundlessly around trees toward what I could now perceive was the orangey-yellow flickering of a small camp fire. There was the crackling and sparks of burning coniferous branches. The fire burned in a tiny clearing and as I glided closer I could see a cloaked figure seated very still beside the fire. I stopped gliding and hovered nearly still, several feet from the clearing. The hood of his cloak was thrown back and firelight glimmered off of long, dark blonde hair. He had the countenance of a beautiful youth, but his ears were slightly pointed, and he had a depth of presence that was difficult to render into words. I knew at once who he was, Jeremiah, the strange prince that the Old Woman of the Cards had foreseen and that Jimmy Cat had met at the Admiral Black Paw Inn.

XV

      There's a transition missing here.  I haven't yet been able to get myself to write about being rescued from the Bridge Realms by Jeremiah. As much as I now realize, a few years later, how much I gained from the Bridge Realms, there is another part of me that still experiences it as some kind of personal failure, a falling off the path in the course of quest, necessitating outside rescue. What was it that Galadriel said? "Your quest rests upon the edge of a knife, stray but a little, and you will fall to the ruin of all."  Well I strayed way, way more than a little.  I was in a multiply incarnating free fall when Jeremiah pulled me out. 

     At this phase of my life at least, I have to admit that it was just too personal a moment for me to write about.  It might have sounded cartoonish to you, but for me the Bridge Realms were as real as waking up next to  fossilized dog shit in a cement alley with a greasy taco wrapper stuck to your face. There are few moments so vulnerable as having a more aware being show that you are not who you believe yourself to be. It is a shattering moment when you feel  yourself awaken to a fierce inner will to break free of an old indentity, while at the same time feeling a poigant tug to remain loyal to the old identity, an unwillingness for me, Morris Schnauman, not to be me anymore. I am still not fully free of the Bridge Realms, and perhaps I never will be, because I feel my old identity ache sometimes, like the phantom pain of an amputated limb.

     The narrative continues a few years later, I was visiting my  parents in the Bronx and it was December, around the time of the shortest day of the year.  I had spent the afternoon and evening in Manhattan and watched a late movie so it was close to midnight before I descended into the subway and boarded the uptown D train back to my parents’ house. The subway car was mostly empty, but sitting directly across from me, under flickering florescent light, was an old man. He wore a very dark blue overcoat, his hair was white, he had white bushy eyebrows, and a lean face with keen eyes. I felt sure that he was British, Scotch or Welsh for some reason.There was a strong feeling about him of other times and places, and there was another peculiarity, he was staring straight at me, which of course is anomalous behavior on the D train or any subway. Subways are governed by the elevator eye contact taboo where any staring is expected to be furtive, and accidental eye contact is quickly averted. His stare was not menacing; it seemed purposeful, lucid, like a ship’s captain staring across calm waters at another ship, there was a strong feeling of recognition and acknowledgement in the stare which was not unpleasant, but I was unsure how to respond, and having grown up on New York subways, the eye contact aversion in the subway instinct in me was deeply conditioned.

     I evaded the issue for a few moments, looking for something in my back pack, and when I looked up I saw that the old man was writing or drawing rapidly in a small leather bound note book with a handsome fountain pen. For some reason I felt sure that what he was writing or drawing had something to do with me. It felt as if I was an interesting native and a visiting anthropologist was observing me and taking notes, or making a sketch. It was quite a peculiar feeling as I am used to thinking of myself as the observer, and not used to being the subject of what appeared to be thoughtful observation. Or maybe I was just narcissistically reading into it, maybe the old guy was an intense thinker of some sort, and what seemed like an inquiring stare was actually him staring into his own mind’s eye with great intensity, oblivious that another subway passenger was in his line of sight. But it didn’t feel that way, and I’ve increasingly learned to trust my intuitive feelings.

     My curiosity was piqued, but I reached into my bag for the book I’d meant to read on the subway. I wasn’t actually interested in reading it, but I had this idea that if I held the book so that the cover was clearly visible----I was reading Russell Targ’s Limitless Mind, which had a Renaissance era astronomical map on the cover besides the title-----I thought that by doing so I might be offering the old man an opening, a conversation piece, there was certainly a feeling of great learning about him, and since he was willing to break with subway etiquette enough to stare, maybe he would ask me about it.

     At first I looked into the book only pretending to read, but then I found myself drawn into a few incisive paragraphs about the nonlocality of awareness, and when I looked up  I saw that the old man was gone. I was disappointed and a bit surprised as there had been no stops, the D train was going from 59th street to 125th street, one of the longest uninterrupted distances you can travel in a New York City subway, but I supposed he had gotten up and gone into another car (maybe to observe other passengers?) and since the D train makes as much noise as a boiler factory, the sound of an old man walking away could easily escape notice. But what was also peculiar was that someone else had taken his exact seat in this mostly empty car. A good-looking youth with blondish hair and large grey eyes, possibly eighteen or nineteen, who seemed oddly misplaced, my intuition registered him immediately as not a New Yorker or even an American but as European or Scandinavian. What was odder was that he was going in the wrong direction on the D train for a tourist, especially since he didn’t get out when the train stopped at 125th. There were record numbers of Europeans in New York with the rise of the euro and fall of the dollar, and some were avoiding the costly Manhattan hotels and staying in Brooklyn, but the Bronx? I hadn’t heard of tourist hotels in the Bronx, but I’d been away for over a year and a half and New York is nothing if not a place always in flux, able to surprise even the natives with its unexpected transformations.

     The youth had long, almost elvish fingers that were occupied with rolling a piece of paper into a cylinder. At first glance I thought he was rolling a cigarette or a joint, but looking more closely I was sure that it was just a hollow cylinder of paper. He evidently completed the operation, which seemed quite purposeful, and then astonished me by getting up and presenting it to me with an air of solemn formality, and an odd sense of old world manners---was that a slight bow that he gave me? I unrolled the paper and saw a map of some sort, there were concentric circles drawn in fountain pen ink, and strange symbols and glyphs, and I realized that this map was a skillfully drawn copy of the one clearly visible on the cover of my book, though the symbols and glyphs were different…

XVI

      I stared at the paper for a few more moments, and then I felt the meaning open, like expanding concentric circles in my mind---- this must be Jeremiah standing before me, he had appeared to me before in changeling guises, and it had never seemed like trickery. Maybe Jeremiah was preparing me for his presence, sensing me out from a different persona, or teaching me that things were more transformable than they seem. I raised my eyes from the page---the face was similar, but this was no Scandinavian student---he was smaller, his hair longer, his eyes incomparably more powerful. A blurry picture of him might look like an androgynous youth, but youth has an unfinished quality about it, while his form seemed fully realized and yet untouched by age, and his eyes had a great depth, an intelligence and sense of deep feeling.

     “Jeremiah.” I said

     “Please excuse my way of stepping forward.” said Jeremiah. “It seemed necessary. There is much to talk about.”

     It had been about three years since I heard Jeremiah’s voice. He had a voice that conveyed so much more than a mere transcription of his words could possibly indicate. With him it was always hard to say where speech left off and telepathy began. He melded the two with gentle and seamless elegance. I was never sure if he needed words for himself, or if they were added as a courtesy to me.

     “Where would you like to talk?” The D train had just pulled into Tremont Avenue and there were only a few brief stops left.

     “I would like to experience your family and the house you were raised in.” For a moment I thought about how hard it would be to explain any unexpected guest, let alone Jeremiah.  I wondered for a moment how he would appear to others. From a distance he might be confused with an androgynous adolescent, but close up everything about him was perfectly realized, a more than human beauty, his movement drew no attention to itself but was more precise than that of any martial arts master. And his eyes revealed great depths of wisdom, deep sadness, ultimate commitment, knowledge of secret arts… OK, I'm gonna stop myself here, there really is no way to describe Jeremiah, at best I would have to find a way to trick the words to hint at things.  One thing I can tell you that may give you some sense of his presence, is that time slowed around him, or as you beheld him. Time slowed because of the intensity of the encounter, which had so many telepathic layers, and depths of feeling.  Time also slows becuase Jeremiah flows through time differently, and to be with him is to partially flow in the wake of that time signature, and this is such a profound alteration of my ordinary experience of time. 

           I reallly hope this doesn't sound beatific and white lightish, because that's not the way it was at all.  This was the D train late at night and there was  the presence of suffering when I encountered him,  suffering I associated with the shockingly dissonant note in his appearance.  The scars, parallel slashes criss-crossing his body...they did not seem healed, they seemed fresh, alive with pain. And there were so many of them, a lattice of firey tendrils of pain. Unhealed wounds are especially unnatural in his kind, and  the mortal insult to his form seem far more shocking than it would on a human form.  It seemed as if the Demiwraith still held him in a prison made of a lattice work of living scars.  Jeremiah allowed them to be visible to me sometimes, it was a layer that I had to see these, that it was part of my learning, but more often, perhaps as a courtesy, he used some sort of magical glamour to hide them from my perception so that I could relate to his unmarred form.  
    
     It was, of course, understood, another implicit telepathic layer, that Jeremiah would keep himself perfectly hidden during his stay. This was why he said he would like to "experience" my family, rather than saying he would like to meet them. Jeremiah had many ways to deflect attention, and to influence visual perception. His cloaking abilities went well beyond optical invisibility---- he could conceal all traces of his energy, hiding himself even from the most adept perceiver. That was the subtractive aspect of his gift; the positively charged part was his ability to appear any way he wanted in the mind of a human beholder. It was an implicit gesture of trust and openness that Jeremiah related to me sometimes from his scarred, embodied form, which I knew I was seeing without influence.

     We exited the subway, and walked silently down Kingsbridge Road, the street aglow with orange sodium vapor light. It was late, but there were still a couple of dozen or more stores open, and many more people on the street than in recent years. The neighborhood was growing, it was mostly Hispanic and black now, when I was a child it had been mostly Irish, Italian, Jewish. I could feel Jeremiah taking it all in with fascination. Every store its own world of color and detail. So many people out shopping late, it was only two days till Christmas, and store windows were crowded with toys in every color, jewelry stores seemed to have mostly gold chains and medallions that glimmered like pirate treasure. 

(note: when I present dialouge with Jeremiah, it is my very imperfect attempt to render communication that was partly spoken, part telepathically verbalized, and many parts nonverbal layers of telepathically shared awareness, much of it visual.)

     “There’s been a great change in New York in the last few years,” I told Jeremiah as we walked, “and it began well before 9-11. People are so much friendlier and kinder than they used to be. So many moments of surprising consideration and generosity. My elderly parents are always given seats on the subway, people always offering to carry their things. And I’ve had so many warm interactions with people during my visit, in the past there was a much more hostile, abrasive tone. Now that I only come to New York about once a year I can notice the change very distinctly.” Jeremiah looked at me with his keen eyes, and was obviously listening with great attention.

      “This is very encouraging,” said Jeremiah, “the people are growing, but you almost never see the signs of new life written about—“Jeremiah gestured at a newsstand we were passing, headlines screaming terrorist bombings in Iraq. “The attention is always given to death and the parasitic forces. There is new life growing all around us, but that never seems worthy of attention. Something horrible happens on the other side of the world and everybody is told. Why is that?”

      “I guess because positive events aren’t as dramatic. I may be pleased that my parents always get a seat on the subway, but such small events are not considered news worthy. It is more exciting for people to read about blood and explosions. There is a saying in the news industry, “If it bleeds it leads.”

     Jeremiah repeated the last five words quietly, “If it bleeds, it leads.” (expressed as an extended telepathic echoing) his eyes thoughtful, unfathomable. We were silent a few moments. “The influence of the Demiwraith and the Feeders can be seen and felt everywhere in this realm, yet there are also signs of healthy life and kindness. This has much to do with what we need to talk about.”

     We walked the rest of the way to my parent’s house in silence and I reflected on the last three years since I had seen Jeremiah, and my doubts about whether I was really the ally that he needed. I felt that I had floundered desperately in the Bridge Realms (these feelings all silently shared). Certainly, the experience had shown me dark areas of my personality in need of transformation, but the last three years represented gradual, meandering transformation, with plenty of back-sliding. So many times I felt unworthy of the path that Jeremiah had opened up for me. Jeremiah looked at me, responding to my silent ruminations.

     “You see your struggles through the perspective of personal failings. But I’ve shown you the Feeders, I’ve shown you what you and your kind are up against. In my vision you are like a man struggling to walk under an ocean, but who blames himself that his clothes are getting wet.”

     

XVII

       Later we were sitting in my old room which was lined with dusty books on book shelves. Outside the window the #4 train, which rode on elevated tracks, could be seen and heard every few minutes. Just past it was Saint James Park lit by the eerie orange glow of sodium vapor high crime lights.

       Jeremiah, always attentive and alert, was taking it all in, absorbing the atmosphere, his face illuminated by the light from the window. I turned on no other lights, because I sensed it would be a distraction.

     We looked at each other in silence for a few moments, the atmosphere in the room changed, a sense of gravity and dark tidings, and I knew that Jeremiah was preparing me for some ominous revelation.

     “The Demiwraith is developing a new strategy, a new way to amplify and extend the suffering of your kind. It hides its mind and activities within powerful cloaking fields, but the new evil that it is spawning is too far-reaching and potent to be altogether hidden. I’ve seen glimpses of it, and the feeling of it is pervasive. If the Demiwraith is allowed to continue its present work it could maintain its hold over your species for another 24,000 years. The tide that should be turning in your favor could instead be harnessed by the Demiwraith, allowing it to harvest human energy for the foreseeable future.” Jeremiah looked at me with a kind of recognition, “You’ve seen something about this yourself recently.” I nodded and Jeremiah waited for me to gather my thoughts to share what I had seen.

      “The vision I had was only about three weeks ago,” I began. “I was writing about the Tolkien books at the time, and for the first few moments, I thought it was a vision about that mythology, but it was too concrete, too temporally immediate, and it left me with a bitter after taste, qualities I would have to associate with some evil unfolding now.

     There was a man, I could not see his form distinctly, but I believe he was white, Caucasian, with dark hair and eyes. Much more distinctly I felt his quality, his essence----he was a kind of alchemist, but also with great knowledge of science and technology. I sensed that the Demiwraith was working through him, giving him power and ideas. 

      There was a hot, raw will to power in him, and he stood before a technological apparatus made of dense metals. It was cylindrical, and there were powerful fields of energy, nuclear, magnetic possibly, I can’t be sure of the technical details, but I was completely sure of what he was trying to do. There was molten material spinning at great speed at the center of the cylinder, matter in an unformed, chaotic state held by fields and bombarded with intense energies or subatomic particles. Here the vision forked and I saw that there were two experiments, in one the chaotic matter was a kind of  molten glass or quartz-like material, and in the other it was a smaller amount of molten metal alloy. What was most clear in the vision was what he was trying to do and why. His will was focused with an unbearable, intensity on gaining control of the molten mass, of suffusing it with his mind and will while it was in this chaotic, energized, molten state. He was attempting to create objects of power, objects that would exist at a fulcrum point between and betwixt matter and spirit----psychoid objects.
 
     The easier experiment was with the molten glass sphere. He was focusing his will on transfering some of his awareness into its fiery depths and keeping awareness within it as it cooled. If he was successful, his awareness would influence patterns of crystalization in a way that would make this object have a parallel resonance with his mind. The sphere would then function as an orb of seeing, something like a crystal ball, or the Palantir of the Tolkien mythology. But this experiment was almost like practice for the second experiment, where I felt the strain of his will, and there was both excitement and frustration, I knew that he had some results, but had not quite succeeded. Spinning at great speed in the second cylinder was a molten disk of metal, its shape always shifting as it spun in a kind of nuclear magnetic potter’s wheel, bombarded with intense energies. The man was straining, focusing his malevolent will on it to influence its shape. He needed to form it into a perfect ring, and he had to keep it in that shape as it cooled, but so far it wasn’t working, he could influence its shape but only in an unstable way, for a moment it looked like a radioactive double convex lens and then a hole or indentation started to form in its center, but then it closed up again. As he bent his mind to it, it scalded and imprinted his mind, so that a fiery wheel burned in his mind always, even when he was away from the apparatus, where the tortured metal continued to spin, waiting for him to master it….

      That is what I saw, but this time, in the telling of it, I saw another detail. At certain moments there was a ring of people around him, I think they were children with blank stares, they seemed to be drugged or enslaved to him in various ways, their distinctness as individual personalities seemed to be submerged, almost erased, they had been altered neurologically in some horrible way. It appeared that he was using their energy, or their enslavement, to amplify his will in the experiment. When the visual part of the vision ended, there was a distinct thought form, a direct knowing of something. I now understood that Tolkien had seen glimpses of Atlantean technology, and such psychoid objects existed outside of the mythological realm, they were as real as nuclear reactors and computers. 

     Hidden in Tolkien’s papers when he died, but later published in one of the many volumes of his father’s notes edited by his son, Christopher, were some of the most advanced insights into parapsychology and remote viewing to be found anywhere. When I first read these notes a couple of years ago, when I was living in British Columbia, I knew that Tolkien was well aware that much of what he wrote about was not personal imagination, but a remote viewing of actual technologies, events and hominid types which may still be occurring in parallel realities, and outside of the illusion of linear time, were still happening in this reality. And of course, much of your history supports that. But never before had I sensed the potency and terrible danger of this other form of technology.”

(see The Mutant Versus the Machine... for some related thoughts on Tolkien and the recurrent dream of Atlantis that haunted both he and his son Michael.)

     Jeremiah looked at me in silence for a few moments, politely waiting to see if I had anything more to share, and I needed a few moments myself to see if there were anything more, but there wasn’t.

     “Your vision, especially in this realm, may often surpass mine, and although you reflect on the last three years and your time in the Bridge Realms with such a sense of personal failing, you may not see how much you have grown, but I see it. Unfortunately, I have also seen some glimpses, though not as distinct as yours, of a new bid for power by the Demiwraith. I have not so much seen it, as you have, but I have felt it, and the feeling has been intensifying, and that has much to do with why we are meeting here today.  I need you to write this down, share it with others of your kind. Secrecy works in favor of the Demiwraith. What is being worked on in the shadows must be brought out into the light of day.”

     “I will do what I can with that.” I replied, “I notice that I can see and feel many of these things much more distinctly when you are present. Your awareness seems to be boosting mine.”

     “Yes, but that is mutual,” replied Jeremiah, “I have an ancestral connection to this realm, but you have a direct one, and you are the strongest link connecting me to what is happening here. We need each other to have more vision of what is going on, but we also need others to be able to intervene. There is particularly the one we have both sensed, but he is still too young to be called upon, there is some great shock he must endure to be awakened…”

     An involuntary trembling began in me. I knew who Jeremiah was talking about, though I had never spoken of him to Jeremiah or to anyone, and was never quite sure on what level of reality my experience of him was occurring. To hear him spoken about was a shock.

     “Did you pull that out of my mind?”

     “No, I sensed him, just as I sensed you, almost from my first moments in this realm when I found myself in the red desert. He is so inextricably interwoven with both of our timelines. But it may be better for us not to focus too much of our attention on him now. We should give him his chance to develop peacefully before the shock awakens him.”

     Suddenly I realized that in a complete lapse of manners I had not offered Jeremiah any food or drink since he entered the house. He had a cloth bag with him, the same one he had with him when I had last seen him three years ago, but for all I knew he hadn’t eaten in days. I apologized for my poor hospitality and ran through a long list of foods we had available, but all he wanted of what I described was almonds, dried apricots and a red grapefruit. I went downstairs to get that for him and brought it back on a tray with some ginger tea.

     Jeremiah thanked me, and told me that he was grateful to be invited into a home where he was known by anybody in his true form. I could sense that this was not merely polite speech, but that Jeremiah was genuinely appreciative, and I wondered where he had been and what he had lived on for the last three years.

     “I’ve been traveling.” said Jeremiah, “learning about your realm. It has been a fascinating experience, but also a lonely path. I have been befriended by people, and have related to some with little disguise, but in all of these encounters I have had to keep my real identity a secret, and this has sometimes been wearisome as the heart always longs for real companionship where it can unburden itself. So I am grateful to be here.”

     “What have you lived on in all this time? What have you done for money?” I asked.

     “That has not been a problem at all. Most of the little I needed I brought with me when I crossed over to your realm, and these things were made for great durability. Money seems to be the resource with which almost anything can be acquired in your realm, and that has been easy to find. My skills in the Vehrillion and other abilities, as you know, are greatly diminished in your realm, but finding abandoned treasure, especially if it is buried in the ground, is such an easy task here, where almost no one weaves spells of concealment around anything, and there is so much of it in your realm. Those who bury money usually live lives of desperation and violence, and so often die before they can regain their treasure. I was able to acquire all that I needed before I had even left the red desert.” Jeremiah removed a small bundle wrapped in a cloth from his bag, there were neat stacks of hundred dollar bills tied with string. He handed half of them to me. “Please take some.” He said, as if he were giving me some extra string or something taking up room in his bag.

     “But you’re going to need this.” I replied, there had to be thousands of dollars in the pile he gave me.

     “You’re going to need it too.” Replied Jeremiah, and I can always find more if I need to. “Mostly I give it to people I meet who seem to need it. And occasionally I trade it for food or transportation. I’ve done nothing to earn it, and it feels best to pass it along freely. There are so many in your realm who cling to such paper as if it were life itself. It’s better to keep it moving along than to hold on to it.” Jeremiah held one bill up to the light and turned it over. “Anyone can see that there are spells written all over it.”

     “Is the Demiwraith involved with money?” I asked.

     Very much.” Replied Jeremiah. “Money is a representation of energy and wherever there is a great appetite and greed to horde energy you can sense the Demiwraith inserting its mind, and the Feeders getting excited…but it’s not just money, wherever energy is transacted, you will find parasitic forces taking their tax, it is the sexual and emotional energy of your kind that the Feeders and the Demiwraith can feed off of directly. Money is just another way to manipulate those energies, they don’t need money for itself.”

      “But this has been going on for thousands of years,” I replied, “What is it that is shifting the equation? I have my own ideas, of course, but I would like to hear your point of view.”

      “Many of your kind are struggling to awaken. A great cycle shift is happening, ages of increasing dark may possibly shift into their opposite. Worship of external objects could give way to recognition of the source of manifestation within. The Vehrillion is just one version of the art and science of recognizing and utilizing that inner source of manifestation. If enough of your kind, were to tap into this power you would be a great danger to the Demiwraith. The battle would still not be won, because the Demiwraith is a master of these arts, and its taint is on all sorts of energy, which enables it to corrupt those who access what you would call magic as well as those who access sexual energy, creative energy or the energy of money or machines. And yet there is this crucial difference, when your kind reconnects to the inner source of manifestation you are now playing on the same field as the Demiwraith, and this in itself is threatening, as the Demiwraith is used to dominating that realm and manipulating your kind like pieces on a chess board, while it stands outside the chess board. When you shift your awareness from the magic of the machine, what you call technology, from the magic of capturing money, territory, and bodies, than you step off the chess board and are bound to notice the Demiwraith and the strings that have been attached to you for millennia. Then the spirit of rebellion and revolution may come to be focused on the Demiwraith rather than on each other. The Demiwraith will do anything in its power to prevent such a possibility, and so far it has proven the master at keeping your kind battling each other, while it feeds off of the blood, the life energy, of both victor and vanquished, and the cycles of turmoil and harvesting continue indefinitely. But it does not have enough awareness and power to control everything in this realm, and awakening happens despite all its manipulations. Even the magic of the machines has gotten beyond its grasp and created what you call ‘unintended consequences’ that it is unable to manage. Environmental destruction threatens the delicate balance of organic life, which threatens the harvest. And the web of electronic communications your kind has spun over the planet is also a threat as it rivals the global web mind of the Demiwraith and can allow awakening to spread and secrets to be distributed everywhere. The Demiwraith is aware that its control is in jeopardy, it can foresee time lines in which your kind explodes into realms beyond its grasp, and so it devises new and terrible strategies to keep you blind and enslaved.”

     “And the visions I had. The power it is feeding to this man, and to the creation of psychoid objects, these are glimpses of the new strategies.”

      “Yes,” replied Jeremiah, “the Demiwraith knows it must stay ahead of the wave of evolution, and if your kind are destined to tap into the power of inner manifestation it wants to be there first to set the rules and the channels of that manifestation through one entirely in its control, a human Feeder, for if that Feeder can be made strong enough to control your kind, then the Demiwraith need only control him, rather than trying to bring a planet full of empowered beings under control.”

     “So the Demiwraith seeks to control key nodes of power and by so doing maintains its control over a vast web of connections.” I added.

     "Yes, that’s exactly what it does, and so far it has been a very efficient strategy, but there is also vulnerability in that strategy.” replied Jeremiah.

      “Someone else could discover those key nodes of control and power and break the web.”

     “Yes,” replied Jeremiah, “and we need to be that someone.”


     ....Again I have to make the disclaimer that what I have struggled to represent as dialouge was something far more than the shadow of words can cast. Jeremiah and I communicated well into the night before we decided it was time for sleep. Jeremiah had an ability to go days without sleep if he had to, but apparently it had been days, and he let me know he was grateful for a chance to sleep in a safe place.

XVIII

     Sometime during the night I had an experience that was neither dream nor waking. For many years I had glimpses and...I'm not sure what to call them---remote viewings? of the person that Jeremiah and I had discussed earlier in the evening, someone whom we both sensed would be awakened by a great shock. It was a shock to me to discover that Jeremiah had sensed him too, apparently in his first moments in the red desert. I had never discussed him with anyone, could never be quite sure of the blurred boundary between imagination and actual vision of him, and most of the time what I saw or experienced of him were not details or specifics but a felt presence. It was more like living alongside of someone. He seemed to be traveling in a parallel journey, and whenever I cast my attention in his direction he was there, somewhere, though our paths had never crossed on the three dimensional plane. And sometimes I could see him, so I knew what he looked like, and I had known his name, Tommy, from the beginning. But I also knew that we were not flowing through time in the same way, the glimpses I had of his life were always within a three month period or so of his life and while years and decades passed for me, the part of his life that I could see remained the same. Although I was about his age, fourteen or so, when I first became aware of him, I had now advanced into middle age, but the part of his life I could see had not aged, and gradually I came to realize that this was because this part of his life was still in the future of my timeline, and neither he nor I had caught up with that nexus in time.

     Of course, the psychological point of view would be that this was a projection of an inner complex, or archetype such as the inner child, the divine child and so forth, that it was an artifact of my inner workings rather than an objective viewing of an outer being. For years I took that possibility seriously, but a mountain of evidence, which I won't bore you with here, pointed away from such possibilities which anyone who has read as much Jung as I have would be bound to consider. Still, the confirmation from Jeremiah was crucial, because it was an indication that Tommy was a presently incarnated person whose timeline was converging with mine. This realization may have been a catalyst for what happened later that night, but I think that the most vital help was that I was sleeping in the same room as Jeremiah, and as he had acknowledged earlier in the evening, we would both be able to see more while in each other's company.

     While I was sleeping I became lucid in one of my dreams and became vaguely aware of my body lying horizontal on the bed. I was not altogether in my body and decided to will myself into an out of body experience, a state that I have experienced many times before. I felt myself rise up and then into an indefinite space where up and down and other such basic spatial clues were absent. Some sort of spatial orientation resumed with a spiraling feeling; my visual field shifted from velvet blackness to a vague chaotic movement of colors---there were sparks of indigo and cobalt blue, but it was all too fast and chaotic for my mind to catch hold of, and the spiraling seemed to be pulling me downward and I assumed that I was being pulled back into my body. In a few moments I was aware of lying horizontally in bed but....there wasn't the familiar kinesthetic sense of my own body, and when the body I was in moved, I was aware that it was not my volition, I was in another body and it was much lighter, younger, and it was in a different place, a place much quieter than the Bronx, a place of trees and wind. There was another psyche in this body, and disturbed by something, it was awakening from sleep, and I was a witness to this animation, miraculous as the first dawn in a new world---awareness blossoming in moments like expanding concentric waves of prismatic color and complexity, but these are only words and cannot convey the miracle of this.

     As the awareness reached out to take in its surroundings, and to comprehend the transition from sleep to wakefulness, I sensed that this was Tommy, but that I was not viewing him remotely as I had always done before, but from within somehow. It was like a case of possession, but I was the possessing spirit! I had no influence on him as far as I could tell, it wasn't that kind of possession, but I was a witness to his inner experience, and could feel with him his bodily sensations and inner thoughts and feelings. I didn't read particular thoughts, it was more like I dwelt in an atmosphere of thoughts and feelings which still had to be interpreted by my psyche. And to interpret or unfold these thought forms I had to slow down, because Tommy, as I had sensed many times before, did not flow through time as I did, moments unfolded slowly and were encountered with a great depth of presence, were felt very deeply. I experienced in him a greater depth of feeling, his awareness was more from the heart, and mine was more from the head, and so our psyches were out of phase. I had to slow down and quiet the rapid fire of my thoughts to synch up with him, to follow his experience.

     He lay in bed looking up at the ceiling where there was a play of leaf shadows. Moonlight was intense, it must have been a full moon or near to it, and this was summer or very late spring. It seemed as if we were in a room that was floating among the tree branches. A knowing was drawn from his psyche-----this was a tree house, one that he had built himself with great skill, using rope instead of nails so as not to harm the tree, and the room was beautifully constructed, almost like a sailboat that floated not in water but in tree branches, and everything in it seemed to be hand-crafted with great skill, the wood work all done by Tommy, and the other objects---beeswax candles, pottery, fabrics were hand-made by people close to him, each object had a history and an emotional resonance. There was a fractal symphony of cricket sounds coming from all directions, the sounds of leaves and wind and the occasional hooting of an owl. The sounds were being heard through Tommy's hearing which I sensed was greatly superior to mine, catching details and nuances, that my ears, after decades of subway riding and loud rock music, could no longer catch.

     Tommy sensed something and he was getting up. He lit a beeswax candle in the shape of a pine cone, and put it in a green ceramic bowl which he placed on a small table. There was a hand made journal on the table and a pen. He opened it to a blank page and wrote, “Jonathan?” I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been. If I could sense him, why shouldn’t he be able to sense me? I formed a word with my mind, and a moment after I did Tommy wrote it, “Yes.” Then he wrote, “Jonathan, what are you trying to tell me?” The words came out of me before I had the chance to consider, “A great shock is coming.” Tommy responded in flowing script, “What should I do?” I replied, “Be strong.” And then a strong intuition told me I should withdraw, and before I could consider that intuition I was withdrawing, the tree house was bellow me in the branches of the tree and I was out in the night air, and in another moment or two I was pulled back into my body, and was lying there in my bed sensing that Jeremiah was nearby and alert.

Go to Part III

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