« January 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
March 21, 2006
adrift: mescaline seas I
note: these are the first of two entries by Commissioner Lance Scepter chronicling his fearful days adrift on the Mescaline Seas - Prof. Boy
Log Update: November 26, 2004, 9:16pm: First night adrift.
Complete darkness, expect for a blue flicker far off the port bow. I fear it is the Alexis flames of Kentucky. We grow closer to her hypnotic burn with each swell. The dark gallows of America, again, agleam with persecution. Emergency flares have all been fired in futility. Ho-ho’s all eaten. No one else on deck. I have not the courage to venture below. A constant gurgle beneath the planks, a mechanized swallowing against bone. Please forgive me, Zeus, for my cowardice. We’ve crested phase 46.
Log Update: November 27, 2004 11:51pm: Day 2
The tunnel of night has ended. My will to survive was pillared on the knowledge that light would come. It has brought little consolation, for now I see the fear that in darkness I only imagined. The barge has drifted into an inner-costal seaway, approximately 30 meters wide, slow gray current, but a constant dragging towards the Blue Flames. The shores are sheared cliffs and thin beaches clogged in the green sheen of razor bramble that plagues this portion of the country. I have no doubt now that we’ve entered the inner water ways of Kentucky. Alexis toys with my fear. Her blueness, sweet flicker, an unremitting beacon. Her fatal blueness. The Alexis Flames of Kentucky, the tomb of the brave, the hopeless, and adrift. Legend says that in her bosom of fire reside an eternity of southern existence.
Supplies are running low. I’ve found Major Scientist’s burlap sack of dried yellow split pea soup. Water from the river is vile, but drinkable. Of more concern is the coffee cache. It is empty. I’m sucking the spent grounds like tobacco, though it lacerates my intestines like shards of shale.
I pace the decks endlessly. My beard grows thick with the passing of hope. Below deck, still the incessant gurgling and grind. My fear of the Blue flicker horizon is only surpassed with what I suspect lies below deck. I’ve descended only far enough to activate the bilge, for the barge has slowly been taking in water. The coal bin runs low. Soon I’ll have to pump by hand.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
Your faithful Commissioner, Lance Scepter, Rudder Boy, Acting Captain, Bilge Pumper,
Posted by dougrice at 4:22 PM
March 12, 2006
adrift: mescaline seas II
The last of the entries of Commissioner Scepter on his voyage through the Mescaline Seas. -P.B.
Log Update: November 28th, 2004
6:00 am: Day 3
Phase 188.
Day light again. As horrific as the night was, and as thankful as I am for the sun to dissolve the aberrations of terror, the day is little comfort. The cycle will repeat, and again, darkness will descend upon the barge and this wasteland of middle of America.
Before night fell, the waterway had began a serpentine course. From what
I could gather during the reign of the despot that is blackness was that we continued in this manner. We’ve also begun to circle the Blue Flames,
moving in an inward spiral: snaked curves and circling in. We grow closer to the Alexis Flames, but always out side her reach. She’s taunting us.
My body is withering from lack of food and the foul water from the river. Shaggy’s candy stash has been eaten so long ago I can barely remember the delicate treats melting on my tongue. Oh, Zeus, what have I down to deserve this fate? Who on Olympus have I offended?
…
10:35am
I have made a disturbing discovery on the east side of the barge. I am not alone on this forsaken, floating island. Footprints. Wet, human footprints along the length of the deck. Who’s are they? Do they mean me harm? If they were friendly why do they insist on this clandestinity? Are they after the corn I just planted on Aloha deck?
I’ve convinced myself that I must begin constructing a defendable position. A fort at the aft of the ship. I fear these footprints will bring my destruction. If starvation and madness do not claim me first.
Commissioner Lance Scepter
..
..
Log Update: November 28th, 11:00pm, Night 3
I fear this will be my last entry, for I do not believe I have the constitution required to survive another night on this barge of death. My fortification on the aft deck is completed. I’ve retreated deep into its walls, but I hear them. Pattering. Young corn ripped from its stalks. Lumber beasts. Rattling. My poor goat’s whelps. Clanging. They mock my fear with their bellow cries. Their badminton joviality. What manner of creature that has assaulted this barge I cannot say. But, if it’s a death by their vile hands or a death by ants, I choose ants.
I’ve eaten my left calf.
No water.
If there is an ant amongst the shores of choppily minstrel’s morning chores, I’ll seek this chief beneath the hill of milking, mowing, sewing and lore. About his lair of tunnels and drones, and ladybug wenches and grasshoppers trolls, I’ll trudge and trudge and trudge and trudge until I find this insect judge. Pikes the swords and shields the bucklers, the gauntlet faced and gloved complexion, antennae, chirps, and chitinoid seams he points at me, the basilisk breakfast. But, no, I’m not, I say and plead, the meal of a lizardsnake on my knees, but a man in dread and trying to flee the Kentucky drift towards the Alexis seas. The seas of flames that burns the will of everyone trapped beneath the swill of complacent life in the middle country where tutors teach backwards to the magic bean, which brought about the glorious leaves, the mortal tongue, and English teas, the crow and camel, the ocelot’s nose, the left foot, finger and index toe, shale and stones and stalagmite chairs, the rings of Neptune and the green solar flares. This bean of power and almighty truth, the construct of constructs between two towers, the tight rope walker and an over jump jester. The Ant King listens to the terrible fate I’m destined to live for the rest of my life, an existence in chains, and ogre debates, and endless orations from the self-righteous states. He opens his mandible all juicy and raw, this royal ant king who’s left me in awe, and with one quick flick, and a remorseful humph, he licks the dirt from the crease of my eye.
Commissioner Lance Scepter, your loving companion through out this life.
Posted by dougrice at 11:37 PM