Shepherd's Journal, Day 1

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RECORDING FROM PERMALINK, SECTOR 5.100.2

DISCOVERED 26 DAYS POST REGIONAL SANITATION

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1822:03:0208 (sighs)

There's... so much around. But it's not what I need. (sniffles)  Not what I need to survive.  Where is the precious (unintelligible) the-- the life-giving stuff that revitalizes me?  Where is the-- a break in the noise just long enough for me get my focus back?  My mind... is-- is a weary wasteland.  But I’m glad I found this journal.

1823:20:8712

When you're all alone, you just-- you start to believe everything you tell yourself.  Your need for companionship, for interaction- it creates a break, it causes a separation, a -a schism within. (sniffles) ...I know this because I am alone.  I'm alone and I'm not of one mind, and, and I can hardly hear myself think over the overwhelming buzzing of endless,  of, of mindless, evil thoughts.  They're not my own.  They come from somewhere else.. It's as if a spirit has settled... inside of me, and taken root.  I’m going to keep this journal, but I'm not sure why.  It's the last reflex of a corned cat.  I am cornered, and I shall surely die soon.  But it's best not to think on it.  Because that's when the evil thoughts resurface. 

1825:12:0317

Today, I cut myself trying to gather wood for the fire.  The blood-- so red- it dribbled out slowly like a velvet sash from my forearm.  It stained the grass, and the leaves, and the dirt... It reflected the sunlight and looked like shimmering red stones all over the ground.  I wanted to see more of it!  But no.  That’s not me! That’s the schism, the void, the evil.  It's (coughs) It wants me... to die, and sometimes I want me to die too. 

1826:50:0243

Maybe there is someone else out there, someone alive like me.  I'm wrestling with the idea of leaving my encampment.  But I'm safe here, now.  This I know for certain...  All else is uncertainty.  There is only here, now and the universe- that's it.  There is only me and then everything that plots to end me...  Yeah...Tomorrow I will check the clearing.  If it's been three years, I leave.  If it's been five, I stay.  Neither option is good; (sighs) Death waits just outside of anything I do.  Inaction is action.  Any action hastens my end.

 

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This is Leimann Shepherd, recording.  And this is zero point zero point one; Day One.

Far Enough Photo

Bordello Spacing

Bordello Spacing

                 

After the dawn, when the sun has peaked past the horizon line like a small child burning to see what is just out of sight on a table, and when the dew ceases to form and begins to disappear, life awakens to the smell of morning light and begins the day song.  For some, the opening refrain is the bleating repetition of an alarm clock, the bassline hum of bustling.  For others, it is the orchestral flourish of wildlife: birds in chorus; the snare-drum snapping of branches and twigs; paws scurrying like sixteenth notes everywhere.  But for Bordello, the morning was only ever punctuated by one sound: short waves curling up onto the sand.  Since the first moment he found himself here, he noticed the eerie absence of any other sound.  It was, in fact, so quiet that when he slept off the beach in the nearby woods, most mornings, he could hear the fog rolling in.  Though Bordello had fallen into a silent routine the way a late soldier falls in with a company of marching boots, he had only recently begun counting the days.  By his best guess, it had been at least five years.  His hair had grown to hide his eyes, one dark brown and one blue-grey, and it was as scruffy as the patchy brush that scratched at his legs at the edge of the woods.

                  The craft he arrived on was still in fair condition, and every once in a while, now more to pass the time than to explore, he set sail on the gentle sea.  No matter which direction he went in, he soon discovered, he would find himself sailing back towards his original launching point.  He believed it to be a trick of the tides, until he decided to construct a landmark and paddle out while facing it.  He built it in the shape of a man. With his back to the open sea and eyes fixed on his would-be Colossus, he paddled against the breaking waves until his landmark fell below the horizon.  He gave a sigh of satisfaction, turned to face the open sea, and pushed on in the same direction.  Soon, he heard the familiar sound of small waves breaking, and saw a man standing on the opposite shore.  He gleefully paddled faster until he realized it was his own Colossus. 

                  Bordello had managed to sustain himself on meager diet consisting mostly of the very peculiar fruit of a very peculiar tree in the middle of a clearing near the opposite edge of the forest.  This morning, he got up from where he slept and walked hungrily towards it. When he came into the clearing, the tree was glowing with an odd green light.  There was no fruit to pick so Bordello went in with his knife, intending to make a tea from its bark. But when he did, the tree unraveled into a coiled snake.  The snake, while large enough to do so, did not seem interested in eating him.  Instead, it reared up to peer into Bordello’s eyes.  Its eyes, like his, were different colors. It began hissing loudly- very loudly.  The snake never broke eye contact as it slithered slowly closer, approaching until its tongue lapped against the longest hairs of Bordello’s beard when it tasted the air. Its hissing was impossibly loud like the crashing of storm-stirred waves against rocks…

Bordello woke with a start.  A wave shattered noisily on the rocks below him, and he blinked instinctively as some sea water sprayed against his face.  He had been dreaming of the tree again.  Rubbing his chest with his sandy hands, he yawned.  When he opened his eyes, he realized the skies were dark and the waves were bigger than he had ever seen.  A storm was coming, the first he had on the island. 

                  Bordello shot up and scrambled towards the woods, thinking about shelter.  The rain came quickly, slipping through the sparse canopy and onto his head and shoulders.  He was sprinting through the forest now, thinking about the cave by the clearing.  By the time he finally crawled into the cave, his beard was with raindrops.  Peering out of mouth of the cave, Bordello could clearly see the tree in the clearing.  He noticed that bright green moss had grown in all over it.  He stared at it, waiting for the rain to pass.

Bordello woke up to a nagging pain in his fingers.  He lazily waved his hand and felt some relief running to his fingertips.  But before he could start dreaming, the pain returned.  Sharply.  He sat straight up, shaking his hand.  A rat squeaked.  Bordello caught a glimpse of it as it scurried into the shadows of the cave.  He held his hand, perplexed.  Blood oozed from his fingertips.  Disgusted, he put the bitten finger into his mouth, tasting his own thick blood.  He felt immediately dizzy.  Resting his spinning head on the cool rock of the inside of the cave, Bordello realized he hadn’t had fresh water in a couple of days.  As he rose clumsily in search of rainwater a snake slithered just under his foot and into the depths of the cave.  Bordello’s mind immediately began working on how to get a fire started for the night. 

When he emerged from the cave, Bordello was hit by a wave of sounds: birds chirped and squawked from unseen places; the wind whistled in his ears and past the mouth of the cave; in the distance, the waves clambered up onto the shore.  The island seemed to have awoken from its silent sleep, and was now almost vibrating with life.

The sun was beginning to slip beneath the horizon.  Bordello opened his sticky mouth, parched and exhausted.  He had scoured the forest for a puddle but could not find even a drop of rain on the leaves.  He wanted to cough but he could not manage a dry hack.  His throat was red and swollen from the dryness.  His mind suddenly turned to the tree, its bright green moss. He seemed to at once appear in front of hit.  Wearily, he leaned one hand against the bark of the tree, slumping.  The island was spinning around him.  He shut his eyes and lurched upward.  His hand grasped something wonderfully moist.  He shoved it towards his mouth and squeezed.  Cool water poured into the back of his throat and its gelidity coursed through his body.  He sank against the tree, squeezing more water from the moss into his mouth.  Everywhere, the new life of the island echoed around him. 

With his thirst assuaged, Bordello felt strong enough to gather some firewood in the last moments of twilight.  He bellied up the tree and onto a large limb.  He yanked off some snarled twigs, descended, and scraped some bark for kindling.  The sun had fully set and night had settled on the island like a sleepy eyelid when the fire finally caught.  But Bordello could not rest. He went back to the tree and hung from a small limb, jerking violently back and forth until it snapped off.  He kicked it into pieces with his heel, and threw them and the wet moss that clung to them onto the fire.  The sizzle and pop of the fire seemed to call for more, so Bordello fed it every branch he could safely break from the tree.  When he found that was not enough, he began tearing planks from his vessel.  Plank after plank went into the fire.  His hands and fingers were gashed and full of splinters, but he continued, goaded on by the roar of the flame, to sacrifice the bloodied slabs from his ship.

Bordello awoke with a start.  Something distant honked at him.  He peered out onto the sea.  A boat emerged on the horizon.  He stood gleefully, shouting.  He ran up and down the shore, waving wildly.  The boat approached, signaling.  Bordello crumbled onto the sand, overcome with relief.  He lay back, looking up at the sun, smiling.  Just then, a thought ripped across his mind.  If the ship weighed anchor, would it get trapped too?  Bordello sat up, trembling.  He could hear the buzz of the approaching recuse raft in front of him.  Behind him, the island was suddenly hushed.

-Lem Andrews

The G is Hard, Geffer

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The G is Hard, Geffer

So in a way these broken vessels reflect something equitable with my own life?

Yes.

Well it seems so simple that it makes me wonder how I never came to the same conclusion.

That's what they pay me for.

So what you're saying is that because they pay me to play in the dirt I find fossils and glorious artifacts that have been lost in time and were otherwise sure to have been forgotten? The reason I find these things is because they pay me?

Yes.

And for the same reason you're able to glean these sure-shot solutions from the babbling produced by inner debates?

He leaned forward in his black leather chair, causing it to creak something pretentious,

Not only that, Mr. Geffer -- it's my job. 

And he took his glasses off and clamped down on the end of them with this teeth to demonstrate just how potentially life-changing his last statement was.

Geffer strided against the ebb of important people moving toward their business lunches and breather breaks.  Just beside a falling sunbeam, he picked out one these suits aerobicising or jazzercising or perhaps practicing tae chi in a corner office.  He thought,

How can I...and break free...and find ...

While repeating the last few words from his psychologist,  

  Not only that-- it's my job.  NOT only that-- it's my job,

Increasingly more snidely, and thinking,

God I hate living in this city. 

Geffer's pacing brought him to an intersection and he stopped automatically, waiting for the signal to cross. 

Once more, melting with melodrama, and this time with Shakespearean gravity pulling on the phrase,

“IT'S MY JOB!”

“What's your job,” some inquisitive and utterly playful voice popped off from nowhere.

Eh? 

Suddenly the owner of the voice materialized as Geffer took note of his surroundings for perhaps the first time that day. It was a suit but the woman inside of it didn't quite seem to belong there.  There was sunshine on her face and with her grin, all teeth, and unabashed like a kid running naked through the sprinklers, she beamed back at the sun.  Tiny, and with a nose so pointed she could only have been some fairy-grandmother's niece. 

Somewhere Grimm is missing one of his characters.

Having watched a parade of expressions march across his face, she tried again: “You said that was your job--  sooo-- what is your job?”

My what?

Geffer's posture scrunched like it did when he made marshmallow and Gnutella sandwiches.  The signal changed.

“You are aware that there are things that people force themselves out of bed for at times of the day that are all kinds inconvenient in order to earn wage, right?” He still seemed to be just waking up, so she continued.  “Or are you some kind of vagrant?”

Geffer was walking behind her now, through the intersection and up onto the sidewalk, and slowly coming to grips with the situation.

Well it appears that I am at least at the moment practicing vagrantism- (Damn hippie)-

Because I have completely forgotten where I was going. 

Geffer looked around him, wondering why his feet had taken him to North Hollywood and Singleton. 

 “Geez mister can I get some of what you're on?”

It was just a deep thought. 

“Well don't have much time for that, I'm afraid.  ‘Stick to the reins,’ they say, ‘and you'll survive.’  That's why I'm going someplace new to eat today.  You must've been headed toward the ferry too.”

Instantly the plots of his feet were revealed.

Actually, you're right.  I was. 

“Well that must be the gypsy in me.  Show me your palm I could prolly read your fortune too. “

And she giggled.  “I am So Phie.”

“Well hello, Sophie.  Everyone calls me Geff.”

“Aww ,well then you should stand up to them, and tell them you hate that name.” And she giggled again, nervously this time.

Geffer picked up on it, and opened with an overstated laugh, “HA HA! Excellent advice! Maybe then I can keep my lunch money too!”

“No lunch money? You can cover your fare at least, can't you? You, hippie.” And she smiled as she turned to pay. Geffer's eyes rose to take in the small harbor and the huge ferry that seemed to have snuck up on him.

My fare?  Oho! My fare! 

She laughed like an old friend.  “Come eat with me Geff,” she said, and she was holding his hand with her eyes. 

-Lem Andrews