Volume One...Issue Five...July 5, 2000
Published by "The Wizard of Odd"
-AND YOU THOUGHT THE OZONE LAYER WAS AT THE ROOT OF OUR PROBLEMS!-
(-All items are the sole property of Wayne Brown. Use of my properties without my express written consent, is against the law-)
"MOTHER NATURE'S SON"
The fading, wounded sun slips silently behind the brewing clouds, much like the frightened mouse eluding the stalking owl. The sky is streaked with the blood of her hurt and the wind invading the calm, howls with the pain of despair. As the wraithlike participants gather to enjoin the cotillion, inevitable conflicts arise. Tempers flare, voices grumble, and finally spit is thrown. The incessant bickering, the building chaos, eventually find patterns within the infernal confusion and then give way to music. The Banshee-like cry of the wind, the kettledrum groans of thunder and the soft, staccato applause of the rain, all blend to complete the symphony.
The music flows, a sweet trickle at first, then builds and cascades on the ears of the earth. Tall, green conifers lean ominously in a simulated war dance, keeping time with the drumming of the storm. An innocent fawn looks up at the grey and licks a raindrop (perhaps a tear?), from her snout. A bolt of lightening startles her and she vaults a fallen, moss-covered log in quest of shelter.
Lightening begins to strike with vehemence and the symphony arises to crescendo. The rain increases it’s ecstatic applause.
A flash, and yet another tall, majestic sentinel enjoins oblivion. His dying screams fading within the war cries of the storm.
The naked man struts frenetically atop his granite parapet, surveying the impending doom. The wet slaps of the rain are ignored by his impenitent flesh. He bellows heedlessly in rage and frustration.
"GREEDY BASTARDS! I TOLD YOU SO!...AND AS USUAL, YOU WOULDN’T LISTEN!...SELF-CENTERED, ARROGANT FOOLS!!!"
Another flash and the tears of the sky, now like those of a maddened child, distraught over the breaking (or taking), of her favorite toy, wash the dirt and the sweat from the man’s weathered visage.
His burning eyes catch the onslaught of the rushing waters, of the once peaceful stream below him, and he curses the "innovations" set forth by himself and mankind. He ponders at how alike the stream and man was. Both entered creation with an imperceptible trickle, tickling the earth with the joys of their respective births, nurtured by the life surrounding them, and then growing out of control with a destiny of violence and destruction. Yes, how alike...and at the same time,...so different. After all, how many streams could choose between curtains “1”, “2”, and “3”?
As the rain cools the air, and a chill wriggles up from the base of his spine, the man thinks of survival. Shelter, a cave perhaps…something…but to what purpose? He saw it coming. Just as he had seen his sister’s accident, Lennon’s murder, and the stocks that gave him his success in the world of high finance...Armaegeddon. How many times had he warned them? The Final Holocaust. When he told them ITT would plummet that time in ’84...they had jumped. When he told his friend Bill, not to take Flight 401...he cancelled his reservations. When he told them jocularly one time that God was dead, they began taking Bertrand Russell seriously. So why had they scoffed so, when he had told them that the Earth would die in 2000?
Entropy...Balance...Plus-Minus...Black-White...Yin and Yang. Nature is a delicate art. Her balance maintained by the most miniscule microbe, and the tallest mountain. Without the balance, all must inevitably collapse, plunging without hope, into the innermost depths of nothingness.
They laughed. They giggled in ecstatic glee. He was dumb-founded. His presentation had been flawless, yet they took it for a joke. He became angry, and his audience was shocked. Never before had he demonstrated such social arrogance as to manifest his anger before his peers. They sighed...they chuckled...they called him an ass. Despite his martyrdom, he still pitied them and wished he were wrong. He knew of course, that he wasn’t. His precognitions had proven themselves time after time. His gift was so accurate, he had even collected $10,000 from a particular skeptic of notoriety. He felt another part of himself trying to break free. This part of him secretly wished for the opportunity to say, "I told you so".
He remembered the vision. Somewhere between hallucination and dreams it had lived as all his others had. There was a God...but not a neo-Christian concept of hellfire and damnation. No, not a Jehovah, or a Jesus, or an Allah, but a...Mother Nature...Dame Gaia...SHE was the creator, the reality, and she cared not about civilization or humanity. SHE was justice...balance...SHE was the reality. SHE was not a dream of an afterlife...not a vision of happiness and peace...but reality...and true to her "nature", her child must die. This flawed, paraplegic child of ruin, must be eaten, just as the blind kitten is spared the torture of life by it’s mother.
The man understood. He had made his peace with nature. Two years ago, he had left his naughahyde throne on Wall Street and began to walk. His journey had been long and not without hardship, but he finally made his way deep into the Adirondack Mountains. The stories had been true. There were still unblemished, untainted isles of fertility in those ancient hills. He made his way by foot, shedding all vestiges of his former life. The clothes were the first to go, the habits died slower, but the memories would take forever. The gnawing of the gnats, the bite of the leech, and the sting of the cold, became his afternoon martinis and mid-morning qualudes. They had kept the stress in check. In time, he became inured even to their onslaught, and with that found peace within himself.
His disappearance from New York was little noticed and overshadowed by a war in Bolivia. Bauxite did well that day.
He had survived by communing with nature, working with her as she intended. He became friends with the earth, and found her to be a loving mistress in return. His friends were true and unfettered by the entrapments of "Polite Society", and as he extended his tenure in the wild, he found himself in conversation with the more amiable of his new-found friends.
At first they took him for a child, but soon marveled at his comprehension and adaptability. Many times after establishing communicae with the wilderness, he felt himself a stranger in a strange land, an alien...an outcast. However, when these feelings would assail him, one of his new friends would come up and stroke his cheek, or take his hand, or bring him fruit. He quickly established bonds that more than rivaled his previous relationships with his own kind. He was amazed at how freely given, affection was amongst his new friends. He felt that he had so little to offer them, but this seemed to trouble them very little. There were many questions and he answered them as best he could, but he was still consumed with a feeling of indebtedness to this new world.
"Just keep the balance."
He awoke with a start when first he heard it. The only one near him was a rat, sated from recent plundering.
They worked and cared for each other, even natural enemies would remember and respect their keep. The balance must be maintained, no matter the cost...and it was. Though sometimes Mother Nature seemed cruel and unjust. The man’s philosophical trend led toward his friend ‘Coon, as it often had since his death.
’Coon and he had grown very close. The little "bandit" as the man sometimes called him, had accepted him immediately for what he was, another animal serving a short sentence on Mother Earth. He would laugh at his faults, but at the same time coddle him with affectation. He gave him help when he needed and asked for nothing in return, and when ‘Coon had need of a helping hand (or paw!), the man was also there. They had spent many a day together fishing, walking, living, before the sickness came. The man knew the dangers from warnings in his past life. Rabies. He cried when he realized ‘Coon’s plight. He knew what had to be done...for the balance...for the safety of all the others...for ‘Coon. During a short interval in ‘Coon’s ensuing madness, they spoke and it was agreed. He must, for the sake of the balance, take his friend’s life.
The man cried as he brought the rock down upon the head of his suffering friend. He then laid the body beside the river which ‘Coon had loved so much in life. (He’d once said that the crayfish had sustained him for so long, that he’d like nothing better than to return the favor!) The river flowed slowly and calmly with reverence that day.
The man looked into the storm. Yes, this was it. Justice. Mother Nature’s way. It would be over soon. No more factories, automobiles, or smog. No more meaningless death. No more hate, greed, or sadism. No more Man. All of this, a thing of the past. Of course, it would matter little with all other life extinguished, but then...maybe she’d try again.
The man knew that he would most certainly die. He entertained no delusions of being the sole survivor, no fantasies of vanguarding a new Earth. He accepted his fate with a smile, knowing that no matter what the cost, the price would be met. Survival of the fittest...and Mankind certainly did not fit the bit.
The ground beneath him began to tremble.
"Quakes now..." he thought to himself, "I told you so..."
The thought had somehow lost it’s importance. Soon would follow an army of lightening bolts, and balls of hail, large enough to shatter windshields. Tidal waves towering over the sand castles left by tiny sunbathers, ground into the ground from whence they spawned. Ruthless hurricanes and cyclones lay waste upon the screaming globe. Acidic rain driving a myriad of razor-like slivers into the waiting indefensible shell of humanity...flash fires and flash floods, cleansing the tattered, tortured landscape...total atomic breakdown and finally,...Eternity. He had seen it in his dreams a thousand times.
George Abernathy, a forty-three year old Security Guard on the night shift at Marcy State Psychiatric Hospital, lit his eighth cigarette in forty minutes, fanned the match, and flicked it to the floor. He took a long drag and thought of his wife and kids. He exhaled and then thought of the new barmaid down at "Sculley’s". He then laid down his hand and smiled.
"There!...(cough)...Beat that, Frank."
Suddenly, above the tumult of the raging thunderstorm battering the walls of the institution, they could here one of their charges screaming like the madman that he was. George’s opponent glanced down the corridor towards the cell where the screamer was confined.
"He’s at it again...every time it rains. What a nut-case...carryin’ on like an animal...screaming nonsense. I still can’t figure out why he keeps yellin’ THANK-YOU MA!" Shaking his head, Frank Viscotti, Male Nurse, night shift, turned to face his challenger, laying down a full house, Aces high, effectively beating George’s inside straight.
"Awww shit!"
"Yeah, George...another two dollars!"
"Why dontcha go shut ‘im up."
"Whaddaya want me to do, George...gag him?"
High atop Mt. Marcy, the tallest of all the Adirondack Mountain peaks, a man stands naked, and smiling as the savage wind and rain beats upon his sun-browned skin. A flash of lightening makes him blink...
He faces the wind, stretching his hands to the turbulent clouds.
"Thanks, Mom...I’m ready anytime."
-The End-
(I have made some minor grammatical changes to the original MS. -Wayne Brown)
by Wayne Brown...November 1981
( Copyright ©1981)
Sunshine...
Beckoning with promise of warmth and comfort
Her soft, glistening rays caress my wanton skin
Her brilliance awakens my long-shrouded vision
Her presence reminds me of my constant metamorphosis
I sit on the park bench alone with the tramps
A child ‘cross the street
Full of hope, love, and joy
Carefree existence
No direct purpose
Irrelevant future
A young woman
Attractive, despite the trappings of her disguise
Rushing back to work.
The taste of her "One for the Road" still moist on her lips
An aging derelict propped up on a bottle of Muscatel
Complains of the difficulty in panhandling
His fetid breath lingering long after his departure
I sit alone
Wondering where I fit in
And then it occurs to me that it doesn’t really matter
I’m glad that I don’t...
-The End-
NEXT ISSUE:
-Inquiring children want to know!-
"WHERE’S DADDY?"
and
"DISPOSSESSION"
-A note about family values-
"BE SEEING YOU!!!"
"TALES FROM THE ARCHIVES"
"Volume No. 1...Issue 1 September 1999"
"Volume No. 1...Issue 2 November 1999"
"Volume No. 1...Issue 3 March 2000"
"Volume No. 1...Issue 4 June 2000"
Comments?...Questions?...Suggestions?
E-Mail me at: "THE WIZARD OF ODD"
"IF YOU DON'T SIGN MY GUESTBOOK,...I'LL SHOOT THIS DOG!!!"
