Dear Putrefying Pus-Bucket

When you say you're going to do something, like write, you had better do it. After all...

you know what happens to liars.

Y.T.
~The Red-Haired Monk of Excess

Deep

Do you not remember it? The way the spray would hit you on deck in the morning? Better than any cup of coffee. You'd always say that, and I'd tell you to stow it. That chill I so hated; you seemed to revel in it, always standing at the bow on first watch hoping for a big wave to crash against the hull. Then, when I was on watch you'd turn us windward to hit me with the damn spray too. How you'd laugh and laugh while I'd spew out my curses.

Remember our months at sea? The winds were our shepherds, the stars the only things that let us know there was a way to the end of the vast blue that encompassed us. Remember how we would sit at the helm at night, with the whiskey keeping us warm, and we talked about ships one day sailing those black seas above us.

Christ, man, Marcus used to have us drop anchor anytime there was a beach. It's like he thought anytime we saw a golden stretch of sand it would be some kind of tropical paradise with fruit and native girls. Remember how more often than not we'd come across a couple of coconuts and a bunch of damn gulls. He was so happy though, just to go on land; meanwhile you and me would wait it out, wobbling around and wondering when we'd get back to the ship where things made sense.

And then, I guess, there was that time that Marcus had just walked off without saying a damn word. We followed him into the darkness of that island jungle. After about ten minutes of slapping at mosquitoes biting me I told you we should live without him. You chuckled that maybe we should, assuming I was joking. Sure, I didn't think you would know any different, but I was half-serious. We found him sitting at the mouth of a cave, surrounded by carved stones. You remember them, those ancient things with the strange markings all over them? Then he up and gets to his feet and goes inside.

Then - then you go in after him. We waited for so long, and then, then you come out, remember? All alone? Your eyes were so wide, and you looked straight past us; stared out at nothingness. It took five of us to drag you back to the ship, and you screamed in the night until we made dock, like you were terrified of the ocean. You kept mumbling in your bed by day about a submerged city and a dreaming god.

What did you see? Why are you so scared of the water?

By God, man, we were men of the sea!

Dear Gloomy Gasbag

No excuses.   

Just write.

Sincerely,

The Dusty Emperor of Nothing

Fear of God

Ah, we, the innocent.  We, the ignorant.  We the selfish, sullen slobs that know no further than the edge of our own stubby noses.  What god protects those who are forsaken by all others? 

The city of Merrimac had ever known of the existence of Thomas Taylor, but chose to forget him.  Thomas was a slow man.  His words stumbled and fell out of his mouth and his clothes always fit too big or too small.  He carried a walkman and listened to the only tape he had over and over again as he aimlessly walked the streets of the town.  People would stop and stare, but he seemed to pay them no mind.  There was no self-conscience about Thomas Taylor.  To say that he felt at ease would be wrong as there is a balance to a mind at ease.  This mind considers its opposite, the darker discontent, and Thomas Taylor had no concept of either of these.  He only walked and listened.  All week long, in fact, until Sunday when he would wander to the door of the church and pull his thinning hair down to one side before pushing open the great wooden doors and making his way to the very back pew.  Thomas sat and listened to the man upon the wooden pulpit talk about love and kindness of neighbors and every beautiful thing that Thomas could imagine and he believed it as hard as anyone has ever done.  It was his one pleasant hour before the wandering began again.  And the listening.  Always the listening.

It was this wandering that led him to the Merrimac mall one afternoon, passing by the glassy store fronts towards the fountain at the center of the mall.  A great crowd gathered around the fountain as a young man in a bright white suit pointed and yelled and jumped up and down from the edge of the fountain.  Thomas drew closer to the scene, drawn by familiar faces and the fantastic antics of the peculiar man.  He stopped at the edge of the crowd and watched as the man pointed angrily at the crowd and slapped a black book he held vigorously.  Suddenly, the white-suit man pointed at him.

“You,” yelled the man, “you are another one.  What kind of devil sounds are you letting infest your ears?  What kind of pollution are you allowing to seep into your brain?”

The white-suit veered into the crowd and it parted towards Thomas who quivered under the gaze of his predator.  He lunged towards Thomas and ripped the ear phones away from his head.

“This is the problem,” said the man, “This is the godlessness that has squatted squarely in the minds of his people.  This filth, this incoherent mess of babble is SIN.”

The last word rolled off the man’s tongue with a sour distaste.

“You!” said the man, pointing squarely at Thomas, “You are bound for hell with this SIN in tow.”

The white-suit turned back towards the fountain and continued his ranting and jumping as Thomas fell away from the crowd.  He stumbled out of the mall and through the streets as tears streamed down his face.  There was no help from hell as he knew it.  Thomas worried himself up and down the streets.  There was no solution.  And so he threw himself in front of a line of traffic to let god take his final judgment.

Ah, we, the innocent.  We, the ignorant.  We the selfish, sullen slobs that know no further than the edge of our own stubby noses.  What god protects those who are forsaken by all others?  Thus the tale of Thomas Taylor, a simple man cursed by the fear of god. 

Dear Folly-Fallen Flap-Dragon,

In my absence I have been partaking of a number of the world's many pleasures. I would hope that you have done the same, but I know you have no such opportunity in your barren land. I have brought you a compelling tune.


Replacements - Bastards Of Young - For more funny videos, click here

I hope that it makes you momentarily happy, and then insurmountably sad as you realize the the full extent to which you have nothing.

Y.T.
~The Red-Haired Monk of Excess

Kingdom

The night is still and dark. There are no sounds on the tracks for miles and that's fine by me. Pretty soon the 3:30 to Allentown will be swinging by and I can catch my ride back to Pennsylvania in the dead of the night. When I climb on I know there will be other boxcar denizens riding along. I know that these people will hurriedly move out of my way, offering me a spot against the wall, or, if I so choose, the corner. I can see their faces, half-hidden by the shadows, the gleam of their eyes peeking out through the shroud of night, pupils wide with fear and hearts racing.

The train arrives in a sort of magnanimous whine, like the death rattle of a warrior king, and brings to the present the future I imagined.

I walk past the terrified vermin, scurrying out of sight like roaches when the kitchen light gets flicked on. These people know me. They fear me. Most of them have heard rumors enough about me. One, I'm sure, has seen me once before and knows truth to some of what is spoken in the whispers passed along the rails. There is one among the wretches here, though, that knows why they fear; he knows what drives my hands and feet to move, what compels me to come to these cars, and what fuels the fire behind my eyes, which, upon seeing him, goes supernova.

The thing about train dwellers is that they're mostly sitting down on their asses or laying down or huddling together for warmth close to ground level, so when he kneels to beg for forgiveness, for his life, he's no nearer the ground than how he usually is; the act is meaningless, and anyway, he should know his pleas fall on deaf ears.

I set about to my work, while all the little reflections of moonlight on wide terrified eyes point at me, taking in the entirety of the horror I inflict on the wretch. there's about thirty ears in the car listening to every whimper, every scream, every snapping, splintering bone. Fifteen faces wince, and feel something warm and thick splash against them. They don't feel, or disregard their own tears streaming down. I never gave a shit either way. Soon, but what for them must feel like an eternity, and for him feel like something longer, the last ounce of breath flees his lungs and the eye I left him rolls back in his head. No one on the car realizes the train started moving over an hour ago. I chuck the body off the side.

The vermin here have fashioned for themselves a chair, which they offer to me; something reminiscent of a throne. I have free reign of the rails. A king sitting on a throne of blood, but where the king sits now there was once a child, spurned and abandoned, but not alone. They formed a perimeter around him to keep him to the wall. When he tried to run through them they pushed him down. Dirty, unkempt hands clawed at him, removing his clothes.

Then the pain. All he can remember is the pain.

The next night he moved to another car, and another the night after, but they always found him. The pain would return and he would wake in the morning with new bruises and blood coming from places where it shouldn't. He cried and cried, and wondered if this pain would follow the rest of his life. The days began to blur and the pain was all that remained, pain and something else, something vibrant and impossible to restrain, yet patient and lurking in the dark - something that wanted to replace the pain, to burn it all away and probably everything else in the boy's soul along with it.

Then one day, it did just that.

The men in the circle around the boy watched one of their own violate him like so many times before. The man stiffened, implying a cessation to his assault, and the promise of another of them getting their opportunity at a violent release. They soon recoiled at the site of the crimson puddle forming beneath him, and the way he lifelessly flopped to the side as the boy wiped the blood from his mouth.

No one would ever touch him again. It wasn't enough.

Five faces burned into the boy's memory while he grew tall and muscular. Five faces would never be forgotten, even as the boy became a king of sorts. Three lie in ditches by the rails, tortured beyond comprehension. Two remain among the living, and so he continues, all the while wearing his crown upon a troubled brow.

Dear Barren Beer Brewer

It's like your foyer...

empty and dry. Fill it up.

Sincerely,
the Dusty Emperor of Nothing