Hiatus


Pittsburgh is going down for a little while.  You may have noticed the updates petering out.

I started this project as a flash fiction in action sort of site.  There was an over arching story but no finite plans on execution.

So in short, I've gone to a place I didn't want to go and instead of writing my way out everyday, and presumably digging myself deeper, Pittsburgh will go silent for a while.

For updates on the Pittsburgh story and it's bigger parent story please visit DEFCON Whiskey.

Sam will be back...

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Awake

I wake up covered in sweat.

I am still in the hospital.  Tubes and straps hold me in and down.  I have become more machine.

A nurse with kind eyes comes into the room.

"Oh, your awake.  I was afraid you were thrashing around again."

"I'm thirsty..."

"Let me get you some water."

I've been in this place for two weeks since that strange stabbing incident.

I've been doped on so many painkillers I'm not even sure I really know what happened.

Something about different faces.

And then that dream about a field.  It seemed so real.  My shoulders throb.

An orderly named Mikes comes in and starts prepping my dinner.  He undoes my safety straps and I happily start chowing down.

"Hey did you finish that book I gave you?"

He's talking about Blindness by Jose Saramago.  An entire world blinded by a disease and the trials of the one woman left with sight.  It was very hard to read and a little long.

"Yeah, I finished it, pretty good, the movie was better."

"I got another one I found down in the juvenile cancer ward."

He hands me a well worn copy of a book called The Losers by David Eddings.

The cover is purple and in the middle is a man stepping out of the darkness with one leg forward and one angelic wing stretched toward the sky.

I can feel my heartbeat in my back.  My shoulders shift uncomfortably.

I read the book that night, devouring in it's entirety.  It is glorious in it's ugliness.

I sleep the sleep of death.  No angels await me tonight.

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The Field part Four

I explode into pain...

Endlessly the crows dive at me.  Cutting me.  Shredding my shirt and skin.

I fall to the ground again, ambushed, attacked.  

Murder by Crow.

The Angel Michael strides ahead of his host.  He is beautiful, like God himself.

"The pain you feel is nothing compared to the agony in our hearts since you left us, Samuel.  Come home."

I stammer out the word "why?"

Why is this happening?  Why am I being attacked?  Why this hill, why this man?

"Samuel, come home, send this man and come home.  Take the Flame..."

Michael extends the sword to me again.

I reach out for the hilt just as a large crow hits my elbow square.  Sinew is exposed.

I try to reach again and a larger bird lands on my back driving me into earth.  The birds attack my naked shoulder blades, pecking and devouring.

With one last breath of energy I lunge toward the sword.

I make contact with the hilt and my pain leaves.

The crows cry fury and all stream toward me.  My back is covered with feathers and talons.

As I rise, with ease, the voices of the crows are silenced one by one.  They melt and combine.  Bubble and form.

They are my black wings.  Dark and with a thousand eyes.

I am Samu-El, the Angel of Death.  

I lock eyes on Micha-El, my brother.

"Yes, Samu-El, complete the ritual, take up the flame and send that soul to us.  Reclaim your rightful place at my side!"

I step to the man.  Every step is lighter than air.  Every breath is the deep drink of a million souls.

I hear a millennia of pain and relief.

The man is crippled with age and a degenerative muscle disease.  As I see him shaded by a grand oak, I can see him in a hospital bed surrounded by family.  

Tears.

I lay hands on his shoulder and I receive his memories.  Thirty years locked in the prison of his body.  Every year he loses more of the man and becomes a diagnosis.  

Micha-El comes next to me, "Cut him free.  It is our Task.  You will be my Lieutenant, proud and dutiful when He shall return.  Already the signs are in place.  Brother, it will not be long.  Come home and serve me."

I remember too many years and centuries and eons at this point.  Micha-El is begging me to return to him.  To cease being who I am and become a servant.

The memories return so fast.  It is a grand thing to serve under the Light and He Who Shall Return.  It is my Task.  My compulsion.  

My memories and the memories of the man, mingle in my brain.

I turn to face Micha-El, I will return.

Suddenly one of the man's memories penetrates the battle in my mind.

"Don't accept what they say you are.  Be who you dream you will become..."

"Michael," I look him dead in the eyes, "go fuck yourself."

The crows awake and rocket from me, clouding the sun.

Everything goes dark.

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The Field part Three

The crows grow louder...

I scramble higher up the hill.  My hands clawing into the soil.  The grass wilts beneath my fists.  Bugs and rodents scream in agony.

My shoulders are on fire.

I am screaming wordlessly trying to get away from the heavenly mob.

The boy slowly walks next to me, although he is a man now.

I stop fighting my way up the hill and look into his eyes.

He has a larger branch now that has many many leaves.  Some look more wilted than others.

As I hold his gaze he ages in front of me.  One of his eyes clouds over and becomes listless.

The crows begin to circle around us.

The man falls to his knees, his right arm hangs loose at his sides.  A smile creases his face.

His branch becomes a root and falls from his hands and burrows into the ground.  I see the root move under the hill.

I see the tree on top of the hill and an old man in a wheelchair underneath.  

The man that was with me is him, distant.

The crows scream with fury.

My shoulder blades are wracked with pain and distort wildly.

I stand uneasy and limp towards the tree and man.

A crow dives towards me and tears my shirt and skin around my collarbone. 

Blood and feathers are in the air.

I hear Michael laugh.

I explode into pain...

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The Field, part Two

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

I try to move but my shoes seem riveted to the field.  The laces are not tight and I kick them off.

I run barefoot in the grass.  The breeze is pleasant.

Every hundred feet or so I see the Angel with the boy.  I run pass them but can notice that every time I see the boy he is a little older, his stick has another leaf.

Always the Angel calls out, "You've been running for so long ha-Mavet.  You can not out run He Who Will Come."

I trip over a root that is coming out of the hill.  My pants are hooked.  

I look over my shoulder and I see more Angels.  The are thousands behind Seven.  They come to me.  The Seven are larger, they have a crackling energy around them.  The boy walks with them.  He is carrying four branches, three with one leaf each.

The one who called himself Gabriel blows into a ram's horn.  The Choir sings.

The Angels wings are each made of a different material.  Smoke, Flame, Tide, Stone, Light, Wind.  Each covered in tattoos.  Unbidden I know their names, Gabariel, Remiel, Zerachiel, Raguel, Uriel, Raphael, and the largest of them all...Michael.

He comes to me.  He reaches out his hand.  It burns.  I feel waves of a nausea come over to me. 

I retch and convulse, my pants tear completely, my leg, exposed is covered in the same tattoos as the Angels.

I hear crows.

I tear off the rest of my pants and run again.

The crows grow louder and the sun is darkened by their wings...

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The Field, part One

I am in a field.

I am in a dream.

The grass of the field is lush and a summer wind blows like a tide.  

There is a hill in the distance with a large tree.  The wind does not blow the leaves.

My back itches near the shoulder blades.  I am wearing a coat.  

The sun is hot, burning, a burden.  Every second my coat absorbs another Fahrenheit.

The wind changes directions and blows my hair into my face.  I have long hair that smells of Spring.

I start walking through the field towards the large tree.  Savior in shade.

I remove the coat.  It is leaden and my arm screams as I pull it off.  I toss it to the side.  The t-shirt I have on now is itchy pulling at something on my back.

The jacket begins to smoke.  

The smoke becomes dark and solid.  It is an airy liquid.  It bubbles and churns.

There is a presence there.  A substance.  A consciousness.

The smoke begins to draw in on itself.  Violently retracting.  Violently subsiding.

A shape emerges from the waste, it is a man.  A man with black, coiling smoke for wings.  He is naked with elaborate tattoos covering everything but his face.

He smiles at me.  He recognizes me.  I can feel his recognition but I do not accept it.

The Angel, for that is what he appears to be, reaches behind his right wing with his left hand and withdraws a sword.

The sword is flame.  The sword is death.

The Angel bends to one knee and offers the sword to me hilt first.

"My lord, the burden is too much.  The Choir harmonizes in agony.  Return to us, the Heavenly Pitch."

"What?  Who the fuck are you, where the fuck am I?"

"I am your brother, Gabriel.  I've taken the Flame in your steed.  But the time has come, he will return and you must be with us..."

"Huh?"

"You've been away for so long Samuel.  So long that you've forgotten who you are.  Take the Flame.  Dispatch the Justice and return.  You are the Apart.  The Vision.  The Burden is yours Samuel, I can carry it no longer.

"If you want to remember who you are, take the Flame and dispatch this soul..."

As the Angel says soul his wings move to the side and a young, husky youth is in the field hold a small stick with ten leaves.

"Samuel, lead the human home and return to us."

"This is crazy, I'm fucking dreaming."

I look to the sky, I look to the compass points, I look for an anchor to latch onto anything that doesn't have a naked man with wings trying to give me a sword.  What is going on?

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

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Ambulance Chase

Last thing I saw was Deborah standing over me with blood on a pair of scissors.  My blood.  She stabbed my over me hip and through my liver.  Deborah did it hard and fast like a sucker punch.  When you get hit in your liver all the toxins it's been scrubbing from your bloodstream suddenly hit you all at once.

So on top of being stabbed, I'm blacked out drunk.

I came to in an Ambulance.  There is two paramedics who are staring at me with fear in their eyes.  My throat is raw, have I been screaming?

My arms are in cuffs, the leather kind to keep me from flailing around.

The paramedics get over their hesitation and slowly tend to their business, mainly me.  

I catch a brief look at myself in some burnished metal.  My eyes don't focus that well but I appear to be very very tan.  On a good day, I'm paler than the pope's ass.  What the fuck is going on?

I drift off to sleep...

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