Back into it, an Echo Chamber(wt) excerpt

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

Thick paintbrush rainbow spiral from a centre point and waterfall-down the dome of the sky as Vindrok and Jorge stampede across a field of broken crystal towers. The purple lattice structures puncture the hard-packed mud and streak upwards with vibrating thrusts. The two hop from the unbroken ground to the seemingly safe patch of earth. Their knees constantly bent as they leap forward through the random crystal petals of the Great Crystal Fields.

Soil cracks like a broken clay pot as another multifaceted purple spire burst forth from beneath the surface of Planet Green Bear. Vindrok flinches as the pointy construct grows just past his lips. He chuffs and hollers back to his squire, “Keep your feet light. Don’t you fucking land if you value your life. No more ecstasy if you should fucking eat it now you bedraggled mayonnaise celebrant!” Both of Vindrok’s feet leap from the ground as the dull brown beneath buckles to the upward pressure of yet another crystal geyser. Vindrok lands four meters ahead, red mane slaps his back with sweat as he bellows, “JORGE! Hie, to me! Lest I am forced to chase you into the underworld! I’ve been there before, and I have a certain reputation. You don’t want to see me pull your soul from death’s grip!”

Jorge, blue tunic wet to his body, takes a sucking breath and leaps with his creamy thighs exposed to the air. Left foot forward, as his right, springs him hopefully forward. While in the air, Jorge considers a day in his youth, a turning point for himself, when he knew he was bound for the world outside that of his small village.

A broom sweeps the dirt floor. Bristles shift small pebbles and cracked stones towards the invisible line at the base of the door frame. The packed earth of the hut is kept free of impurities by the twice-daily dirt sweep. Dark hands grip the broomstick and jerk, twist, and cajole the small rocks out of the hut. Shoulders and the attached muscles move automatically as the face directs its gaze out the front door flap. Eyes skyward as the mind roams the what-ifs and waking dreams of a bored younger.

Ahead Vindrok bounds from crumbling crust to crumbling crust. The oils and waters of the planet burble and jet super-heated vapours with keening squelches.
Jorge staggers behind, taking calculated leaps to sections where the dirt is most homogeneous. There’s no way to sess what’s underneath, but Jorge cannot let the mad kneht win.

“Explode and I’ll swim through these noxious fumes to the bowels of this hollow fuck and sieve your soul from the wretched soup that roils at the core!” Vindrok threatens from the far end of the Plains of Final Judgement.
Jorge curses as his eyes fail to locate the next patch of safe earth. He slides left foot forward and feels the crust beneath his big toe begin to crumble as his stomach begins to drop out. He trusts in the failing ground and pushes off his right leg eyes wide and fervid in his skull. They scream as he launches himself forward.

Forked red, green, and gold burn across the sky. Trailing oozy grey smokes out behind. Eyes follow the shape, winged, dark, colossal. The broom stutters against the dirt before it clatters to the packed floor. Feet step out of the hut as the sky burns overhead.

Jorge’s fingers strain forward, nearly popping out of their joints as he reaches towards safety. Green vapour spouts up and around Jorge. His vision fills with a vibrant jade as the liquids jet towards the sky. His seeing globes judder violently as tissue dissolves off his outstretched hand. Bones. Flesh drips as the green steam surges past his extended digits and he sees his own bones.

The county airship floats the levy towards the scaled invader. Its thick canvas gas sacks strain against the taut rope of Jorge’s village. His hands remember coiling, binding, stretching and braiding the lashes that now stretch across the gas sacks woven from the village across the water. The airship adjusts course to intercept the dragon. For that is what the source of flame and destruction is. One of those arms of god manifest. As it seeks to tear the world apart from its heavenly dominion the airship adjusts weapons and directs all ire towards the dragon. The heart seeking harpoon launches from the bow and young Jorge’s eyes track the crystal shuriken amidst the smoke pouring out from the ruined huts of his neighbours.

Vindrok pauses and looks over his well-muscled shoulder. Sweat glistens as his charcoal eyes seek the truth amidst the exploding earth. He sees not the bits of Jorge gradually melt away from extreme heat, and liquid pressure. Vindrok sees aquamarine pseudo pods tickle the edge of white calcium. Feathers gently clipped by the nurturing beak of a foreign bird whose plumes burn green and sulphurous through an ultraviolet scrim.

Great blue claws tug at the embedded crystal. Golden chest scales heave and wither as the shuriken grinds deeper towards the dragon’s hearts.

Headspace, an Echo Chamber(wt) excerpt

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

“And let’s murder this heckin’ tree!” The forest shakes as, with a mighty chop, Vindrok’s sword smokes through the trunk of the nearest tree. Fairly 30 meters tall the tree stands upright for a teetering moment before it descends. Its branches crash against its siblings. “Break! Snap!” Vindrok shouts.

The siblings spill to the side as hefty branches press the weight of years against their tender limbs. Forceful maturity bends and cracks off their reaching arms. They clatter to the hair crowded floor while the trunk continues its descent. Large arms drag and claw against the siblings.

The trees scream as their limbs are ripped off by old hoary hands, grasping claws, and woody nails. This giant that falls, this older sibling, cascading tresses lank as life gushes out their torso. The siblings cringe and cower as the dying body of their old pushes them aside.

Some siblings fall flat against the planet before even the sibling completes their descent. They weep into the dirty ground; sappy tears stick to the dead hair of the family.

Vindrok howls in triumph as his greedy nostrils dig deep the charcoal reek of the smoked tree. Roots from trunk smoulder after his furious axe cut.

“We’re going to burn all these offenders until they give up their lords!” Vindrok is a solid point of fury amidst the bodies of the cringing and dying family.

The trees continue to peel from the ground, their roots flinging earth into the air with plaintive snapping. The Old continues to fall, drags its leaves through the stratosphere. Dazzling green blades burn fluorescent orange as they scream across the infinite reaches of the sky.

“Though your family is slain all around me your crooked broken hearts are non-functioning. So, each death proves your abominable nature. It isn’t I who murders your family with burning sword.” His voice echoes through the canyon of trees. Echoing against their dense trunks further and deeper into the Hercynian wood.

The dirt and hair move aside as branches plunge down. Each cracking penetration forces aside detritus and loam. Drippy chunks the circumference of Jorge’s thighs explode from subterranean worms as the trees slice through their lengths.

Aurora(wt) Excerpt 2

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

Every time I look into his eyes, I feel that moment, I die at that moment, the moment I was born, and he imprinted on me. At that moment, even unto forever I became for him the most important thing in his life.

I’m prepared as I turn to him, to meet his eyes again, to share a thought space. At least, I thought I was.

The warmth I feel is unusual, like the slow wet sleeve of an old sweater sliding up my neck and soaking my face with damp musk. When I lick my lips, I can taste a fuzzy cheerio. Each jewelled dram of thought plunges dry cells across blister tires. Coughing through the model coats my beams split a grist and chime mouse pads.

I ease into this new feeling and spread my mind. Jacob is there lapping up every bit of knowledge, the vision, the coyote, my heart hammered and pummelled by logs. Hammered and pummelled. In the bright desk, bleachers grin at cascades, but I gape on all fours. Trespassing with a rancid soliloquy that punishes falcon knuckles almost breaks me.

Then an ebb, a melancholy elbow wedges itself shallow. Door stoppers elicit the last fidget spinner from my daisy and I crinkle.

Aurora(wt) excerpt

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

I bend my head over Jacob’s back and bury my tear-streaked face into his warm fur. The reek of deer blood and his strong musk hits my heart like a logging truck. As each log rolls uncontrollably onto the highway I feel my heart smashed and rolled. I can see it in the moon-drenched streets, my heart sobbing as tree corpses bounce and collide around it. The driver of the truck swears at the coyote as he wrenches hard on the steering wheel to avoid the mangy creature.

The beast looks back, and through the jumble of logs, we make eye contact. I drift here for a thousand years, caught in this hormonal nimbus. I hold my position, straighten my posture like I’ve seen my mother do: stern brown, slightly protruding lower lip, and vacant eyes.

A warm sock envelops my vision and I hear a familiar voice, “Hey, Renesmee!” I swivel my head trying to locate the voice. The road beneath me juts and tosses. The log truck is swallowed by a sudden crevasse and the coyote is nowhere to be seen. “Renesmee!”

The voice is urgent, but I can’t find it. “Jacob!” I shout I scream, I bleed, I gnash. I release a desperate howl and claw the air as a log tumbles into my heart face.

Our fires are low and seldom burn for long. “You know, you don’t have to like, have one every night.”

“I don’t light them every night.” He coughs out the words as he tends the fire with a long stick. Dark shadows play across the surface of his corded and toned back. His shoulders or knotted and I can tell from his movements he is stiff from the day’s run. “I light them when we need them.”

“Won’t they give our position away? Our trail?” I twirl my hair and listen to the forest creatures fleeing from our small fire. My stomach growls.

Jacob finishes tending the fire and squats next to me. He’s been doing this a lot recently. I keep my eyes focused on the flame but the hairs on my arms and neck begin to tingle and rise. Something inside me is clawing to get at him, to consume him, to make him mine, to own, to tame, to claim, to fillet the wolf and rend the man. To skin his dreams and melt into his solid presence.

San Pedro

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

Polly shakes her head at the taxis occasionally slowing by to entice. Frustrated honks glide off into the rain. She strides past derelicts, street heavies, and closes her eyes tight against the wall of graffiti that hems in San Pedro.

Fibrous cylinders fountain like fast forward spaghetti from a prehistoric non-vascular aquatic life form that resembles a toilet paper roll. The cylinders collide mid hologram with a trophy touting lion’s head sewn to the prehensile breasts of a mother kangaroo in whose pouch a tangled mess of electric wires squirm and sizzle. Their googly eyes flying out over the street in clumps of four. Behind the Kangaroo a long vanishing point type rainbow stretches back to the primordial past where giant sloths feed Jesus goldfish crackers. A sagebrush jack rabbit, cartoonish and cute, supports a pack of boner pills that dance along the animal’s tongue. Balloon letters bleed from the rabbit’s asshole, “Best of Luck!” As the sea spaghetti wriggles ever up the walls of San Pedro they encounter the level wherein no birds dwell. Figures of aged folk, in an early Raphaelite style swoon over benches their outstretched dying palms filled with dripping bird seed. Crows knacker silently and gurgle down the seed which wriggles in their distended bellies. Though the horizon of the San Pedro walls imposes a creative restraint on the gang of artists responsible for the duelling graffiti, each has interpreted that final moment uniquely.

From the East, the wire joeys braid together as nautical vessels of war, gliding through a mine rigged dark up towards the surface. Torpedoes launch from tubes and spring forth hyperbolic flower arrangements of surveillance clouding chaff clusters. Their broad hulls brush spiralling crustaceans and squid aside as they move upwards towards the white-capped limit of this space.

From the West, a bounty of grotesque deformities, long-limbed torsos astride abominable sets of twelve legs with each ending in a cracked yolk wherein curdled foetuses blow bubbles in the first and last breaths. Test tubes crack open upon smoking wounds in disembodied arms. Ink spills from a sodden cloud at the upper limit. It rains down from above and as the drops fall they transform into a series of political caricatures of the hated politicians of the day. The multi-limbed beings spread out in the rain, some bask and others shelter under one another with the occasional hands wriggling digits at the submarines rising above.