OK…encouraged by your enthusiastic approbation…I shall post some more of my epic.  Here’s another little teaser.  You read the prologue (posted previous)?  Good.  You’ll notice it’s in prose.  The main chapters are in a broken sort of poetic dialogue.  These are the chapters having to do with the voodoo priestess (Mama Nancy) and the dark muse she summons (Crow) to help her contact the lost angel (Syth) and get him to go into the Underworld (Sheol).  So the poetry is the medium of the spirits and magic and ritual.  In between these chapters are short, self contained chapter/stories I’m calling “Interludes.”  They are in prose and tend to deal with more mundane, real world stuff – things that have something to do with the surrounding chapters (if not in story, than in theme) thus…the line of my plot (if you follow along and draw it) goes not in straight lines, but in the universal shape of the spiral.  So here is a little interlude below.  Following the prologue is chapter one (or Book One).  Following that, is a set of Interludes.  This is one of them:

 

 

Interlude:  Ash Wednesday

©Joshua Alan Doetsch

 

“…what is this quintessence of dust?”

-William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.ii 308

 

 

“I found a miracle,” says Curly; so I hang up the phone and grab my camera and wonder why he said it in the tone of voice a gent might reserve for, “I found a decapitated head in my fridge.”

 

Curly meets me outside the church, one of those stone cathedral jobs you find in big cities, and his eyes bulge out in the way that only Curly’s eyes can bulge.  Between the eyes is a black smear on his forehead.  It’s Ash Wednesday, a few chimes before midnight.

 

I press a twenty into his dead-fish hand.  “Relax Curly, you’re in the company of a friend.”  Using “friend,” I illustrate the wonderful elasticity of the English language.  I might also have used “source” or “meal-ticket.”

 

“J-Jake I…I don’t think they’ll like having…one of your kind here.”

 

“Cold feet Curl?”

 

Hmph.  Not like my “kind.”  Probably not.  But they won’t be above snagging a copy of the publication, in line, at the grocery store next week – gawk at the ridiculous photos, read up on the latest adventures of the Bat-faced Boy, learn that goldfish commit psychic vampirism on their owners and how you can keep it from happening to you.

 

“No sweat Curl, I’ll just go in disguise.”  I lick my thumb and press it to my forehead.  A long, final drag on my cig, and then I press it to the wet thumbprint, with a hiss of spit and embers.

 

Curly shudders and I smile.  It’s very grade-school of me, but I get a kick out of making him shudder.  Sometimes you have to stop and appreciate the little things.

 

Inside the lobby, the stained-glass filters the outside street lights, painting the room in every shade of spooky.  Curly must have squealed to one of his fellow parishioners because I hear a voice hiss, “Scavenger.”

 

Scavenger?  Yeah.  That’s me, lady.  Wily F-ing Coyote.

 

Hungry eyes – the better to spot an opportunity with.

 

Shifty paws – the better to snatch an opportunity with.

 

Lying tongue – the better to shovel bullshit (so sweetly, that you’re eating out of my undies, oblivious to my opportunity-snatching).

 

“Come on Jake,” says Curly, eyes still bulging like a cartoon frog who thought he was getting a meal, but now sees the fly, armed with a giant flyswatter, coming right at him.  Inside the church proper, the air hangs heavy with tension, acrid and thick, and the incense hits me with the nausea of childhood memories.  Curly and I ambulate down the aisle – the coyote and the frog.

 

The place is almost empty, but graveyards, libraries, and old churches are never really empty, you can be by yourself, but not alone.  The eyes of the statues and paintings of the saints follow me across the whole room.  I don’t think I’m welcome here.

 

Don’t sweat it gents, I’ll be out of your hair before you can say, “Self-righteous suicide.”

 

Underneath my coat, I turn on my camera, anticipating the ambushed photos snapped before I’m ushered out.  My flash powers up with a sleepy whine.  Curly mumbles about the “miracle” that disrupted the mass.  I don’t really listen.  I’ve seen miracles before.

 

We get to the altar.  The tabernacle glistens in gold and gilt and guilt.  The priest stands in a fugue.  He doesn’t even notice me.

 

Good.  Pictures with impunity.

 

I don’t know why people make such a fuss over these things.  There was the stigmata guy in Gary – he drilled holes in his hands and feet in order to get money from believers.  There was the oil puddle that onlookers swore reflected the face of Jesus in Joliet.  There was the form of the Holy Virgin in a mildew stain on a porn shop’s ceiling, just south of Milwaukee.

 

I don’t know why they make a fuss, but they always do.

 

And I take pictures.

 

And I make some extra coin.

 

I aim my camera.  “Alright Curl, whenever you’re ready.”  Curly grabs the mettle lid.  Underneath rests the blessed ashes.  Every year, at the start of Lent, the faithful come down the aisle, the priest says a prayer and smudges ash on their foreheads.  Presto.  Only this year, the mass was interrupted.

 

Curly lifts the lid.  There’s a face.  Of course.

 

Then…I freeze up.

 

I don’t breathe.

 

I can’t even click a picture. 

 

It is moving.  It is screaming.  There’s no sound, but it writhes, like a face pressed up to a gray, silk sheet, and it screams silence – screams like a demon mime – screams like one of those tragedy masks – screams like that painting, and I find myself thanking someone I haven’t talked to in a really long time that I can’t hear the screams…

 

Something crashes on the floor.  It’s my camera.

 

“I think…it fell,” says Curly.  All I can do is nod, nod as if he’s talking about my camera.

I originally wrote this, I think last year (maybe a little longer ago) in my friends’ (Dave and Adrienne) apartment, in the middle of the night, after a Neil Gaiman signing (in Chicago) that I should not have gone to – as this story was due, in class, halfway across the state, the following day.  I didn’t get any sleep.  My friends slept, and I just had to pound something out, then make the 3+ hour drive.  Somehow, I think, it turned out pretty good.  It’s the opening prologue to my epic poem (in prose).  It’s gone over some changes since then, and been sifted through various test readers and friends and audiences.  So here is the version I have now – since I felt like posting some piece of the work I’ve been talking so much about, and it is the most polished.  Some of you have read it before (but this is the latest version) and some of you might have not.  So here ya go!

 

Enjoy:

  

SOULS UNSURE:  Prologue

©Joshua Alan Doetsch

 

 

The door opens…

 

…like a mute scream.  She does not remember when she stopped bothering to scream – when beer bottle blows to the head convinced her to be silent, to be still.  And they’ll say the story starts with an old priestess and a chant.  They won’t remember.  But it begins with a little girl and silent screams full of broken dolls.

 

He’s in the shadows, in the doorway – framed horror.  Dull eyes stare.  He never blinks.  The Devil never blinks.

 

No Daddy.

 

She crosses her legs, pulls the blanket.  But her legs are not strong and blankets don’t protect.  Closed eyes can’t protect.

 

He stares and licks his lips.  Stands and stares and breathes loudly – the garlic stink, a promise of evil.  She holds her breath.  The stuffed animals all face the wall.  She doesn’t want them to see.  He stands and stares and she holds her breath…

 

A clank, a mumbled curse, and spilled booze – he always smells of old booze – she’ll smell of old booze.

 

Then, the red door closes like a happily-ever-after.  A bright, happy red door.  But happy endings only happen if the story stops.  Death and entropy are two steps past every happily-ever.  Two steps behind every red door.

 

Bump.  Scrape.  Down the stairs.

 

Bump.  Scrape.  He limped and lurched when he drank – a penny dreadful shuffle.

 

Bump.  Scrape.  It took away his human walk, possessed him with the wicked limp, the evil lurch.  The drink put a demon in him, Mama always said, before she was silent, before she went to Heaven.

 

Where are you now Mama?

 

She creeps out of bed.  Invading weight on chest and pelvis…not tonight.  She locks the door.  Meaty, oily, fumbling fingers…not tonight.  There’ll be hell to pay, but she locks the door.  Wet, garlic breath…oh God, not tonight!  Back in bed, she prays in the flickering yellow light of a street lamp dying slowly in the night.

 

She leaves her window open, hoping someone hears her prayers.  No one ever answered her screams.  Outside her window, flakes of snow ghost-dance, twirl and spiral with the clumsy grace of cherubs, glowing white against the black paradise of sky, a promise of purity.  But snow always falls to slush, painted gray by the blackness below.  In the dead of winter she leaves her window open, hoping someone hears her prayers.

 

Prayers to Mama and prayers to God and prayers to all the saints – prayers every time he scrapes up the steps and prayers every time he shadows her doorway – but it always happens.  The damage is done; it will just be done again.

 

Bump.  Scrape.

 

Bump.  Scrape.

 

Outside the door, full of fumes, taboos, and imps perverse, he twists the handle.  She prays in desperation.  He preys in depravity.

 

Please God, take me to Heaven.  Please God, send him to Hell.

 

Bangs and shouts and curses.  The red door groans.  She’s all tears and prayers now; tears and prayers and both flow free and translucent between sobs.  When you pray that there’s a God, who do you pray to?

 

The red door buckles – the red of love – the red of lust – the red of blood.

 

Hands folded to the sky, she always prayed in the same direction – out the window, towards the origin of snow.  But now she scatters her prayers to all four winds, scatters her prayers to anyone who will listen and now prayers plummet like snowflakes screaming rape.

 

She hears the beat of broken wings.

 

Prayers, like radio waves, travel until received.  But where do things go when they’ve flown past their purpose?  Let us say they go to a gray place, and that is enough.

 

She hears the beat of broken wings.

 

Through the tears she sees something gather in the blackness above her bed, a patch of something darker still.  A beat of broken wings and it materializes, all dark dust and ebony mist, hovering over her bed like a fairytale boogeyman.  But she’s not afraid.  She knows real monsters wear masks called Father.

 

The little girl.

 

The ashen phantom.

 

She stares up at it.  It gazes down at her.  She breathes.  It pulses.  The pulses match the rhythm of her breath and each undulation reveals the outline of a wraithly head, spectral hands, and the sad symmetry of broken wings in the tenebrous cloud – the way a dark city skyline appears in staccato bursts, to the strobe-flash of lightning.  And she reaches her hand, running it through the phantasmal shape.  A sable, wispy finger, from out the cloud, gently brushes her cheek.  The sooty digit mingles with a tear, leaving a muddy-dark trail down the eye.

 

Did they speak?  The little girl and the ashen phantom?  Maybe.  Maybe she whispered that no one had touched her, without wicked intent, in a long time.  Maybe, in a frozen second, it told her the bedtime story of its mangled wings, how it fell from the sky, like her prayers and her tears and the snow – painted gray by the blackness below.  Maybe.

 

Or maybe two lonely souls just stare at one another.

 

Now, she looks to the pitch-dark shade and then the red door and recites her prayer.  It pulses.  Considers.

 

It flashes, faster than a false promise, embers and ash trailing like a shroud, to the red door – through the red door – outside the red door, a SCREAM.

 

Bump.  Crash.

 

Bump.  Crash.

 

Bump.  Crack.

 

 

 

Flashing reds and blues announce that all is not well in this place where even social workers fear to tread.  Black and white cars sit in the gray slush.  The snow comes down white, but always ends up gray.

 

They wheel the man in a stretcher and neck brace, found him at the bottom of the stairs.  Some kind of stroke, they say.  May never walk again, they say.  Then, they found the girl and the beer bottles and the bruises and they gave each other knowing looks.  But the girl did not say a word.

 

Family members were contacted and reports filed.  Just one weird thing, said the younger officer to his venerable friend, between bites of cold wind.  And they both nodded and recalled the graven image on the red bedroom door.  Sketched in black ash and burnt in bas relief was a portraiture, a definite shape, that they could not explain but only hearken back to the snow angels made in their youth, hearken back impossibly far to a time and place where snow was still white.

Last night, I wrote something that disturbed me, which is kind of scary…but kind of exciting too.

Today…
My lunch came up 6.66 and I had to grin.
My alternative loan came up 0.00 and I had to frown.

This morning, I lost my sense of humor. I always knew it was a pretty good defense mechanism for me – to cope against the nasty things and the banal things in the world…but I never realized, how much it shielded me…until I felt all that bad stuff rain down, unprotected and naked. It was pretty bleak. I felt like Don Quixote at the end of The Man of La Mancha – laying, feeble in bed, with all his illusions gone.

I have it back now. Bullet proof vest. Shields up. Wear your rubbers. Wear a rubber. All systems go. I’m chasing windmills again.

And I don’t know what it is lately…if in my sleep, I do circus tricks on my bed and stand on my head for hours, followed by displays of back flips and body contortions…but my neck HURTS. I just want someone to rub my neck and whisper that everything will be all right…or maybe just hum the Mario Brothers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themes in my ear…that’d help too.

This isn’t a complaint post, just an update. At the end of the day (and my life happens at the end of the day) I’m writing a hip, epic poem – I walked onto this school’s stage for the first time and snagged the lead role (one I always wanted to play) – and I have long hair that induces numerous hot girls to play with it.

I can’t complain too much.

I just found out Kevin Smith is doing a sequel to Clerks (Clerks II: the Passion of the Clerks). This means, amongst many other things, that Nick and I can milk our Jay & Silent Bob personas for at least a few more years to come.

Joy.

Check out the video journal of the making of the movie.

Also, I just discoverd Kevin Smith’s blog.

In the last few days…

I broke in my pirate hat – my pirate beard is growing in (and all should be ready by Halloween time) – learned more Oedipus lines – wrote more voodoo/epic poetry – drank the last, little bit of my rum – had my hair played with (and once again found myself wishing I had the ability to purr…to better express my feelings at such times) – discussed the differences between women pirates and pirate wenches – received a very generous gesture from some good friends that while, not yet quite necessary, reminded me that regardless of my persecutors, be they quota crunching cops yelling “suspicious!” or loan hungry debtors shouting “deadbeat” or torch-wielders crying “evil!” . . . I’ve surrounded myself with fantastic folk who can call “bullshit!” (thanks everyone).

And now it is most definitely October and my mindscape is turning to pumpkin patches and when they’re ripe, they’ll grow faces and sing.

Eureka bound!

So I promised myself I’d just relax…and I did…but then the little voice in my head wouldn’t let me rest until I did a little writing work (damn you voice!). So I just did a little, so that I may sleep. And, in the course of working the fiction of my thesis, discovered the “real” reason Poe chose a Raven over a Parrot (originally, he was going to write “The Raven” with a parrot repeating “nevermore”).

And then, looking at the things I have written, and some of the things I have planned to write, I realize that my epic is made up, in many parts, of all sorts of little “how this came to be” myths that would give Aesop a boner.

Off the top of my head, I know we’ll learn:

-Why roses have thorns.
-Why crow cries always sound angry.
-What happened to the black bird that Noah first released (he released a black bird before he released a white one).
-Why carrion animals have to wait until someone is dead to eat them.
-Why a crow is black (and we’ll hear a lot of false versions on the way).
-How Jesus learned to walk on water.
-Who put the idea of eating an enemies eyes, into the heads of the Aztecs.
-Who put Prometheus up to taking the blame for the theft of fire (and the real thief).
-What happened on the 8th day of creation.
-Why Poe chose a raven.

And listing all these fine little mysteries makes the little voice in my head happier. So I think I can finally get to sleep. But why not share one more Aesop fable…here is the story of what compels me to get out of my bed, at five in the morning, and write…

WHY JOSH CAN’T SLEEP
There once was a little boy named Joshua.
But you can call him Josh.
Little Josh slept in the tremulous warmth of a waterbed –
slosh, slosh, slosh.
But waterbeds have no under-bed,
no frightful space beneath.
And this caused a stir amongst the monsters,
supposed to dwell underneath.
Each one of us has our monsters.
They are assigned to us at birth.
Little contracts from goblin kings,
signed by your parents,
and your parents will never tell,
bound by secrecy and goblin legalese.

And so the chimerical beasts crouched by Josh’s bed –
not under the bed –
there was no under-bed –
and they howled and squinted their chthonic eyes,
flapped necrotic wings, gnashed fanged maws,
and stuck out rubbery tongues
(and then their tongues squinted and gnashed their very own, smaller sets of eyes and teeth and tinnier tongues…).

The destitute demons cried, “What are we to do?”
“There is no under-bed!”
“No Plutonian space beneath!”
“Where shall we haunt and howl and sing and spit and shit?”
“The ancient law, the arcane clause says…
If we can’t dwell under-bed…
We must dwell somewhere that rhymes with bed…”

And so…
somewhere between seven and 1,001 demons
dived into Josh’s head.
Little Josh sat up with a gasp,
long before the call of the morning lark,
eyes opened wide and wide awake,
and no longer having any fear of the dark.

And so Josh threw out his nightlight.
Shadows offered comfort instead of fright.
But it’s awfully crowded in his head,
a Plutonian space crammed with monsters,
where they have haunted and howled and sang and spat and shat.
And it is with the greatest difficulty
that he can find a correctly-sized hat.
And he sleeps less and less during the night,
and more and more by day.

And these days,
to get any sleep,
Josh has to write and type,
just to quiet the demonoide din.
And the chimerical goblins are still there,
with teeth and eyes and wings and tongues.
And if you look Josh in the eye,
from just the right angle,
they just might wink at you.
And if you stare long into his ear,
they just might slap you.
But Josh eventually grew his hair long
and that hardly ever happens…
…now…

How many Taco Bell burritos do you have to eat to achieve enlightenment?

Cause I feel like I should be there by now…

Long day.

I was going to do some writing. But I…don’t quite feel super sick…but something is on the way…so I’m going to head it off…I’m going to take load of vitamins and vegetate in front of DVDs until I fall asleep for ten hours.

My pirate hat came in!!! It will be a fun Halloween month (some people celebrate the day….I celebrate the month).

Tomorrow I shall be in Eureka!!! That’s right…the reason you bother hanging out with Nick will be back. Look me up. Say, “Hey!” Grab my ass. Whatever floats your water craft.

PS – Rich…bless the music you bestowed on me with this computer…I still hear something new every day. I’m listening to the “Brain Stew” – Godzilla remix…and I smile…