Make your own Holiday Card

This year I made a Holiday Greeting card, so that I could hand them out to people that a know, mostly at work. Just so that you don't feel left out, you can make one of your own. Just print out the two pictures, by selecting one of the images and printing it, and then the next one, one to each side. It's a double sided card. Side One has the preliminary character designs for the first part of the story, the other side is the one that is folded into quarters. What you should end up with is a postcard sized card with the Joy to the World on the outside, unfold it once for the half-sized page, and then unfold it all the way, flip the page over for Side One.

Side One	Other Side

Happy Hollydaze

Happy Holidays to everyone, I hope that you will be checking out this blog sight in the upcoming year.

I have been quietly working on the next project for some time now and have gotten to the point of being able to post stuff here.

This next project does not feature the denizens of the deep but a different version of deep, profound.

To put the story short, a group of people go back in time to find out why the Mega-Mammals and the Cloves Point People disappeared. When they get there they find out that they aren't the only ones paying a visit to the area. Creatures from Lovecraft's stories are there too, "to pick their brains."

I made a holiday postcard with the announcement and will post it soon.

Under Warranty

Here is the last one for now.

Have you ever felt like the warranty on your body has expired?

Under Warranty

By David John Reichen

“Bringgg . . . !” the doorbell rings at umpteen, way to early in the morning, o’clock.

As I stumble out of bed, put something presentable on and head for the door, to answer it, it rings again.

Persistent Bastard!

You would think that in this day and age of Instant Messaging, E-mail and those annoying telemarketers that leave voice messages on your phone, a guy could at least be allowed to get a decent night’s sleep without being disturbed in the morning.

“All right! I’m coming!” I vent at the cretin’s ringing, knowing fully well that I can’t be heard on the other side of the door.

After a moment, I finally reach the door and gaze through the peep hole to find out who this relentless tormenter is who dares to wake me. Through a blurry mind, since I had just celebrated my birthday the night before and still suffering from its effects, I see one of those bicycle messengers standing in front of the door. He has his arms crossed before him and is bobbing his head up and down, listening to what they call music.

Before he gets a chance to ring the bell again, I open the door and scream at him, “What in the heck do you want?”

He jitters a bit, off balance since he was reaching out to press the button when I opened the door. I smile at him as he gains his balance.

He says, “I have an envelope for a Mr. Elwood Newlan, are you him?”

Taken aback by the fact that anyone would be calling at my door at this hour, by name even, I calm down a bit and answer yes to his question.

He reaches into a pouch that he has hanging on his belt.

I quickly duck out of the doorway, fearing that my life is going to be cut sort. What a thing to happen on the day after your birthday.

“Hey, Guy,” says the messenger of doom, “this is not a gun. It’s just a retina scanner. I just need to make sure that you are who you claim to be.”

What an absurd notion, with the reputation that I have, I would feel sorry for whoever would be trying to impersonate me and say, “wouldn’t a piece of ID, like a licence, be enough?”

“You would think so but the people that contracted me to make this delivery insist on a positive scan before I hand it over to you. They say that it is necessary to do this since it is so easy to fake IDs, even the new holographic ones.”

Seeing no other way of getting rid of this morning’s pest, I lean forward and have him get it over with. The sooner it is done, the sooner I can get back to enjoying my extra day off from work. They insisted on this so that they would not have to hear me groaning about a hangover all day long.

He presses the scanner to my eye and closes the trigger switch. It beeps and he puts the scanner back into the pouch. He then says, “I guess you are who you say you are.”

As he is busily opening up a backpack that he has and takes out an envelope, I ask, “what would happen if the scanner did not beep?”

“I would just ask where the real person was.”

“And what if someone should take the backpack from you, what would happen then?”

“If they managed to get it open somehow, it would blow up, just like the ones terrorists use. The scanner disables the trigger mechanism, if it is not disabled, BOOM!

“It has happened to me once, there were blood and guts flying all over the place. What a mess that ended up being. I wound up in the hospital for a week after that. There was only a trash bag of body parts of the jerk who pulled that stunt. Now, no one takes my backpack after I explain what will happen to them if they force it open without it being disarmed.”

I take the offered envelope and he gets back on his bike and peddles off into the distance, heedless of any of the surrounding traffic.


I close the door, go to the kitchen and make breakfast for myself, sit down at the table and begin eating. As I munch contentedly, I take a closer look at this sign of impending doom that I have received from persons unknown.

The envelope looks innocent enough, your average 10/20 sized one, so that you can put a normal sheet of paper in it with the minimum of folding. The To address was mine but the From address was for a place I knew nothing about, whoever heard of the Akrham Medical Center, of Arkham, Mass. It did however have one of those red urgent, open immediately, time sensitive information, warning labels printed on it.

With a sigh, I open up the envelope, take out the enclosed piece of paper and read what is written on it:



Dear Mr. Elwood Newlan:

The warranty on your body will expire in 7 (SEVEN) days from the receipt of this letter. If you wish to continue with the current level of service that you are enjoying, please go to one of our local offices, in person and alone. You can find out where one of these offices is located in your area by going to our web site (www.newmanenterprises.com) and enter your name, current location, and the enclosed ID Key.

If you do not have Internet access or cannot come on your own to a local office without aid, call our toll-free number listed above. Do not access our web site from a public place, we can track the route you are using to connect your computer to us and you will be blocked if needed.

WARNING: The information contained in this letter is highly confidential and is not to be distributed for any reason. This policy will be strictly enforced.



“This has got to be a joke? Right?” I muss to myself. Do they really think that I would believe such an outrageous statement, a body being under some kind of warranty? Whose leg are they trying to pull anyway?

Having nothing better to do for the day, I log onto the Net and check out their web site. I am shocked by what I don’t see on it, no fancy, flashy stuff, no advanced and enhanced user’s interface, no screaming video advertising their newest products, just an ordinary form to fill out, asking for your name, city, state, and ID Key, just like the letter described.

After a short wait, I have the address and driving instructions to the place that they want me to go to. The location seems familiar to me, so I finish my breakfast, put some clothes on and follow the direction that I had printed out at home.

The directions started from downtown and directed me to drive down Broadway Boulevard. I drive past the Boston Center for the Preforming Arts and the campus of Boston State University. I go over the I-405 overpass and where the street splits into either going back to downtown, I-405, I-5, over the Ross Island bridge that goes across the Willamette River to the east side of town or continue southward, I take Terwilliger Blvd, which eventually lets me go to the top of the nearby hill. As I reach the top of the hill, I realize why the address seemed so familiar to me, next to the upper terminal of the tram line that they finally got working, is the place where I was supposed to go, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

I park the car in the visitor’s lot, enter the lobby and take the elevator to the floor that their office is on, the thirteenth floor. Once the elevator reaches the floor that I want and the door opens, I exit it and step into the floor’s hallway. It seems mostly empty, which is sort of strange for such a busy place as a hospital. I make my way down the hallway and enter the suite where Newman Enterprises has their office, approach the nurse receptionist and say, “hello.”

Hello, Nurse!

“Oh, Hi!” says the cute nurse, standing at the reception desk. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you could explain why I was sent this letter?” I ask, taking out the envelope and handing it to her.

“Sure thing. But first I have to check your eye, security is essential for what we are doing here. You know?”

“What is up with all of these security precautions,” I wonder, as I have my eye scanned again. Whatever they are guarding seems as important as Fort Knox.

She uses the same type of scanner that the bicycle delivery guy used and the scanner beeps for her to. This time I did not duck for cover when she pulled the scanner out from her desk. Something additional happens than just the thing beeping though, on the computer screen next to her, an information window pops up with my name and all sorts of other things on it.

“Yup, you are one of The Few,” she says, as if The Few were something special. She pivots the screen so that I can take a closer look at it. “It’s a good thing you came by, your warranty is about to expire and the grace period has just kicked in.”

“Warranty, grace period?” I asked, still bewildered. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t understand a thing about what you just said. Who would offer a warranty on a body anyway?”

“That’s OK. I get to deal with The Few’s blissful ignorance whenever they come in for the first time. It is all a part of the NDA that their guardians agreed to when they use our service.”

“Guardians? Oh, you mean my parents, right?”

“In a sense, I guess you could call them your parents but legally they are just your guardians,” she answers, leaving me more confused than when I started this conversation. After a pause, while looking at the screen, she continues, “just as I thought, they did leave a personalized message for you in case they could not be here to explain the facts of life to you.”

She taps a few keys on the keyboard and out pops one of those new data cubes, she picks it up, hands it to me and says, “take this cube over there to the viewer and maybe it will better explain what your lot in life is.”

I take the offered cube from her, go and sit down next to the viewer, put the cube into the provided slot, put on the goggles and hit the play button. After the standard test pattern that adjusts the viewer to the persons eyesight and hearing level, I see an image of my recently departed parents.


“Is this thing on?” Pa questioned, looking quizzically in the pickups direction. “I guess so, so here it goes. Son, if you are viewing this message, we are most likely dead and pushing up daisies and you are left on your own to cope with a situation that you know nothing about and is none of your making.”

“Hi, Elly!” interupted Ma, leaning further forward into the pickup’s area and waved.

“Hi, Ma, I miss you,” I think, waving back to her.

“Doesn’t it feel like we are in a spy movie or something? How exciting!” she gushed.

“Come on, Ma, calm down a bit and let’s get this over with so that we can get started in making our new boy, OK?”

“Anyway,” Pa continued, focusing his attention back on the pickup, “your Ma and I could not have kids, something about our genes not making a good match but we still wanted to raise one, to nurture and in a way to spite the government. They went and revised that Inheritance Tax so that only descendants could have all of the money willed to them; otherwise, they would take out half of the money transferred from whoever it was to go, to help pay off that stupid national debt that they keep on increasing.

“Like Hell, we and others thought, who could not have any kids of their own and we, your Ma and I, decided to do something about it. We would rather have our hard earned money go directly to the next generation than to bunch of idiotic bureaucrats that can’t even balance their own checkbooks.

“After being turned down by the assorted legal and otherwise adoption agencies, you can imagine the run on orphaned kids that this would create, and not being able to go the artificial route, the fees the fertility clinics charged went through roofs and your Ma was just too old to bear a young’n such as yourself, we almost lost hope. Believe me, it was not a happy time for either of us, that is, until we found out about Newman Enterprises and the service they offered.

“For a set of fees, they could create a child of our very own, to raise, love and spoil rotten,” Pa said, with a nasty smirk when he got the rotten part of his speech.

“Just like a real baby,” Ma piped in.

“Yes, Ma, just like a real baby,” Pa said, with a sigh.

“I don’t understand all of the techie type things that they were trying to explain to me. Most of it went way over our heads. You might have better luck when you ask them to explain their process to you. What it ends up being is that we get the son we otherwise could never have had.

“If you’re wondering about that extended warranty thingy, you’ll have to ask them about that too. For a small extra fee, they said that they could boost your immune system so that you would not get as sick as a normal kid would, so we took them up on the offer also.

“Sorry to break this news to you like this but the Non-Disclosure Agreement was clear as to what would happen if we decided to blab about what they were up to.”



The message from beyond the grave ends. I take off the goggles and put them aside, brush off a couple of stray tears, take the cube out of the slot, go over to the nurse and hand the cube back to her.

“Here you go,” she says, after taking back the cube and hands me a tissue. “They must have been good parrents,” she adds, sympathetically.

All I can do is nod at her, dabbing at more tears dripping down my cheeks.

After I calm myself a bit, I ask her about this made bussiness that Pa mentioned in the video.

“It’s sort of like the difference between a site built home and manufactured home. Instead of the Papa bits combining within the Mama bits, inside the Mama, to make a baby, we take the Papa bits and the Mama bits and through our pattent pendding process, out pops a brand new baby. If they choose to, we can even add the special feature you have.”

“YOU MEAN, I WAS NOT BORN?” I blurt out. No wonder they kept on getting evasive when I asked them where I came from when I as young. I thought that they were just embaressed to answer that question, so I just stopped asking, especially after that supposed sexual education class they have you take.

“That’s right,” she affirms. “Basically, you were hatched out of a machine instead of being born of womb. You’re still a person though, just like anyone else. Don’t go feeling strange or differnent because of it, you’re normal in everyother way.”

I have heard the phrase before but thought it was only a cliche, I fell the rug being pulled out from under my feet. I look at the nurse, dizzily and mutter a plaintive, “what?”

“Maybe it would be better if I just give you a tour of the place,” she says. She comes to me, takes my hand and leads me out of the office.

I follow her down the hall until we come to the foyer of a laboratory area. We stop before a solid door, she turns to me and says, “remember, what I am going to show you is very secret and should not be told to anyone. Understand?”

I answere, “yes,” and she opens the security door and we step into a compleatly new world.


“ First off, what I do in my office is security screening, to make sure that someone does not pull a fast one on us just for a news story. I also do psychological screening of the prospective guardians.

“After they pass through me, we take them here and take blood samples. We extract the DNA, make a few corrections if either parent has a disabling genetic defect, mix them together to create the genes that will eventually become a new person. This is the main reason why we need to keep all of this a secret.”

“I suppose so, considering that most people would think that your gene tinkering is like you’re playing God here.”

“Exactly.”

We move past the genetics lab to another section and she continues, “here is where we make the babies come alive. We place the eggs that we fertilize with the combined DNA of the parents into these mechanical wombs and they gestate until they are ready to take on a life of their own as new born babies. No birth defects because either of the parents have defective genes nor from environment hazards that the mother is being put in risk of and no premature births either.”

The room is filled with rows of aquarium type things. Some of them are empty, those that are not, have what looks like pods immersed in them, where the developing fetuses are encased. I ask, “why are some of them empty?”

“We are still doing a long term clinical trail on the current brood, so only a few at a time are being used, just to keep us busy until the BIG DAY.”

“How is the brood doing?”

“Ask yourself that one, we are both brood mates,” she giggles. “As far as the researchers can tell, there isn’t a bad apple in the whole bunch, which is much better than the natural way.” She says that last part with contempt, as if nature should get her act together or something.

As we stand there, behind the glass wall separating us from the developing babies, a couple goes through a nearby isolation booth, puts on bunny suits, exits on the other side and goes to one of the pods.

“We encourage the couples to come and interact with their developing babies, play with their kids to be. It helps nurture the bond between the parents and the child. The fetus develops better because of the stimulation it gets too. It’s also fun to watch, see,” she adds, pointing to the two proud parents that are laughing. “Ouch. She’s going to be strong, if that kick was any indication.

“The last stop in the tour is next. If you will follow me,” she says. “It is my favorite part.”

I signal my willingness to follow and we move further along.



We come to a door, she knocks and someone inside answers it. After a moment of hushed words, we are invited into the room to watch what happens next.

The nurse leans to me and explains what is going on, “This is our version of child birth. Unlike the painfully long and messy way that takes nine months to get to, only to end so grossly, with things spewing out all over, the doctor just adds a set of chemicals into the tank. This triggers the placenta to dissolve away, see. What would normally be gushing out of the mommy dissipates and the baby floats to the surface, the doctor takes the baby out of the tank and hands it to the expectant parents. The little kid is then dried off and bundled up, ready to be taken home to love and cherish.

“Oh! Look at that, he has opened his eyes. Isn’t it just like an angel waking up from a nice dream?”

I have to admit, after seeing the normal birthing process on the Health Channel once, this method does seem to have its advantages. The end of birth defects, both the mother and the father being able to lead a normal live while the baby is developing and an easy birthing process may be appealing to those who can use their service. As we head back to the office, leaving the new family to get better acquainted with each other, I wonder about what is really going on here and what it costs to run this sort of operation. After we get back to the office, I ask her about it.

“Let’s see, first there is a charge for the preliminary checks that I do, to try and find out if they really want to use our service or are just a bunch of nosy busybodies.

“Then there is the fee for all of the gene scanning that we do and then the resulting splicing that takes place to create the blueprint for the new baby. We draw the blood right here so that we know who we are getting it from. This prevents someone from trying to make what would end up becoming Hitler’s love child or something, by not using DNA from an unknown source. We process the parents’ genome on a state of the art computer. We then combine the two sets of genes together, preserving genetic diversity. We are not in the business of cloning dictators or anyone else for that matter. The only added thing that we do that nature does not do is that when we find out that either parent has a defective gene, we swap that gene out with one from a set of genes that we know to work fine. By picking from a set, we are still able to preserve diversity.

“Once we have the genes combined, we test it the results on our developmental computer models, to see if there are any nasty surprises that we have overlooked. A separate division offers the genetic screening as a service to the public, a sort of prenatal screening.

“All that is left after that is to run the results through a gene splicer, put the set of genes into an artificial egg, implant the egg in a placental membrane and let nature take its course, that does cost a bit too but the process is guaranteed to produce a breathing, bouncing baby. This is a lot better than going those other routes where you have no control over the end result.”

“With all those fees and charges you’ve just mentioned, this place should be reeling in the dough.”

“You would think that,” she answers, “but it’s not true. All of it costs the parents about as much as the normal adoption agencies charge and certainly a lot less than those high priced supposed fertility clinics that have popped up recently.

“All the bills get paid, on time. We get paid decent wages, enough to afford a few luxuries but nobody drives around in limousines or has a fancy jet to fly around in, unless they save enough to pay for it themselves. Heck, most of the corporate suits drive around in beat up used cars and fly coach when they need to, of all things; they feel that to do otherwise, it would draw too much attention to themselves. They’re like, oh, financial ninjas or something. You could be driving right by them without even noticing that they are running an operation like this.

“It’s like they feel that they are doing this as a service to humanity or something.”

I take a moment to think about what she has just told me and I realize that she has yet to mention a thing about what I came here for, so I ask her, pointblank, about that damned warranty notice they sent me.

“Oh, that. You know how software companies charge you for their anti-virus and privacy software programs for your computer?”

“Yes,” I affirm, quizzically, wondering what a piece of computer software has to with all of this.

“We do the same thing for your body,” she answers, as if such a revelation is just one of those things. “Your appendix, which no one needs anyway, is substituted with a nanotech factory capable of manufacturing antibodies for all of these nasty germs floating around. The fee that covers the extended warranty for this service covers updating the antibody profiles that the nanofactory uses to build the antibodies for whatever is ailing you.”

“So how come, even with this factory inside of me, I still get sick now and then?”

“It is because you are supposed to experience the miseries as well as the joys that life has to offer,” she says, sagely, as if giving me some sort of sermon. “Besides, if you don’t get sick occasionally, you would start acting like you were some sort of superhuman monster, which is something we do not want people to think. You do, however, get well a lot quicker compared to most people, don’t you?”

“That’s right!” I exclaim. “I have yet to miss a day at work because I was sick. Some of the guys at work joke about me being inhuman,” I muss, realizing now that I might have to take a special day off now and then just so that they don’t get to suspisious.

“They are wrong about you being inhuman though, you are more than human. I believe we are the next stage of human development.”

“So what do I do about the warranty? Can I renew it or something and when do I do it?”

“Right now, you are in a grace period, we specify one week so that they realize that it is something that they need to take care of. It is actually two weeks but we don’t tell them that or they will wait until it is too late to get in touch with us. If you go beyond the two-week period, we send someone to drag your ass in here and find out what you’ve decided to do about the warranty.”

“So what do I do to renew it then?”

“That’s simple, log back onto our web site, just the way you did before, it will know that you came in and you will be able to browse our available policies. They are cheaper than most supposed health insurance policies and our’s actually does something for your health. You can even give me your preference and billing information right now and I can fix you up in a flash.”

“I don’t know. You have given me way too much to think about. I would like to go home and think this over for a bit and get back to you later.”

“Fine with me. I do admit that it is a little overwhelming to take in at one time but don’t take too long or we will go and get you back here.”

“There is one thing though that’s been bugging me though.”

“What’s that?”

“How is it that you are able to keep all of this a secret, anyway?”

“We have a very enforceable Non-Disclosure Agreement,” she says, smiling wickedly at me. “Each parent is required to follow it explicitly, this includes not talking to their child about this. What the kids don’t know, they can’t tell anyone else about. Legally, your parents signed one on your behalf so we expect you to honor that agreement too.”


As I leave OHSU’s campus, on top of the hill, I get the feeling that the world is going to be overrun by a bunch of us pod people.

When I get home, I go to my computer and type in my thoughts on what has happened to me. I move the mouse over to the send button, to deliver the E-mail of this to the local newspaper. I hesitate, at the last moment before sending it. All of the sudden, unbidden, I recall the last words that the nurse had said to me as I walked out the door, “It is a new world we are creating here and we will let nothing stop us!”

“Does the world really need to know?” I ask myself, “would humanity be better off not knowing what is going on around them?” I can just imagine the protests, riots and such that would happen if word of this got out.

Instead of clicking on the send button, I hit cancel, committing the E-mail message to the eternal bit bucket it the sky. I then go to their web site, to check out what sort of policies they have to offer . . .





... The ancient Egyptian prophecies became true, upon the return of that messenger of the Other Gods, Nyarlathotep, wave after wave of destruction, war, and death, occurred. At its end, humanity lost its right to live on earth and the remanents were marched off to extinction.

But, all was not lost . . .

... It has been centuries since the ship has left its planet of origin. The planet is now reduced to a wasteland of dust and ash, when its life giving sun expanded to engulf the inner two worlds.

This ship is not the first of its kind to arrive at the planet it is orbiting. One other one had already proceeded it, making the air, water and land suitable for the mothership’s precious cargo to survive on.

As it neared the end of the voyage, the mothership began the development of the beings that are its temporary charges. They have now grown to adulthood and are eager to arrive at their new home.

The ship, from distant light years away, lands softly in a meadow by a stream. It opens its doors, allowing the colonists to step out onto the planet’s surface. It is here that they will begin to create their new world to live in.

Painted on the side of the ship, written in a language long forgotten, is the name of the organization that brought life to this planet, so far away: New Man Enterprises. Underneath the name is their logo, a crowned monkey dressed in yellow robes, a King in Yellow, Ha Nu Man.



“We shall go out to those brooding reefs in the sky and dive down through the black abysses of space. To the myriad stars we shall go. And on the planets that we find there, we shall dwell amidst wonder, and glory, forever”

The Observer Effect

Here is one about my favorite place to visit, the Seattle, Washington, area.

The Observer Effect

By David John Reichen

Intro:

As I sit here at the closing of another chapter of my life, before I am to embark on what I consider the trip of a lifetime, I reflect on the events that have brought me to feel a necessity, no, an overwhelming compulsion, to go on this one and maybe final journey, into the unknown. If you do not further hear from me, do not worry of my demise, for I have gone to a truly finer place than this dry Earth has to offer.

On a Wet Mountain:

It all started on a hot and humid day in July. I was camping in the Olympic Peninsula, in the upper western part of Washington state, in the United States of America. I did this to get way from the constant grid of work. This area is known as a Temperate Rain Forest. Unlike most of the rain forests, which are tropical, this one is more than halfway from the equator to the North Pole. It is raining most, if not all, of the time. Which explains why I was being drenched in rain that falls on Mount Olympus while they were suffering from a massive heatwave and drought a mere hundred miles away. Everything is coated in a thin film of water. All of the plants, trees, bushes, everything gathers this moisture floating or falling through the air, soaking the soil, making it an ideal habitat for amphibious creatures.

After pitching the tent out of my car, along with some other hopefully useful equipment and setting up my camp for the next couple of days, I went to explore my surroundings and fellow campers that had decided to join me in my quest for relief from that horrid and hellishly dry air to the east. It was during this walk that I meet one of the campers that was soon to become a close friend. He was dressed rather curiously. He wore long pants and a turtle necked long sleeve T-shirt and gloves. The only thing of him that was exposed was his head, above the neck. I asked him, “are you comfortable dressed like that?”

“Oh, hello,” he answered. “You bet I am. I am just as comfortable as you are. These clothes act as a water wick and distribute the moisture evenly and allow any excess to be gotten rid of by evaporation or in this case it just drips to the ground.”

I was kind of skeptical of his explanation but could not find anything wrong with it. I still thought that it was strange to be going around fully clothed like that. I had adopted a minimalist approach, bathing trunks, T-shirt and sandal but to each his own.

“Going on a hike?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, “my campsite is set up and I am off to see if bears really do shit in the woods.”

“Mind if I join you? I have always wonder about that one too,” he said, laughing at the little joke.

I answered, “sure, why not.”


We left the campground and followed one of the trails that meander through the area. After a while, we engaged in small talk and I asked him what he did.

“I’m a biologist studying the newts and frogs that live in the Forrest we are traipsing around in,” he said and pointed to a nearby frog. “These creatures have managed to live here almost unchanged for eons. While others have perished, such as those terrible reptiles, the Dinosaurs. Incredible, isn’t it.

“And what do you do?”

“Oh, I work at a company that is developing a way of sending audio and video data through the telephone system,” I answered. “Right now the video is very choppy since we have to send frames at such a slow rate and the sound is distorted because we have to piggyback it onto the video frames. The telephone companies are working on ways to allow us to speed up the transfer of all of the data that we are trying to push through their wires. When we get both running the right way, it will change the way people communicate.”

We came to a large pool of water and watched the newts climbing around on the nearby foliage. After some moments pause, he gestured grandly, as if he was to begin lecturing a class and said, “behold, these adventurous creatures that can live in the water but still are able to venture onto dry land or on moist soil at least. They develop in water, from egg to the tadpole. When they reached maturity, they grow limbs and are able to crawl about on the submerged bottom of a pool or on land, as long as the gills stay moist and the skin does not get overly dry. Adaption to this new environment went further, in being able to survive on land, they have lungs that are their internal gills and keep them wet by coating the surface with a thin layer of mucus, this evolutionary development paved the way for all future animal life on dry land. We owe our own lungs to these pioneers.

“Did you know that while the Dinosaurs and such perished 65 million years ago, the amphibians just had to go and live in the sea until it was safe again to reemerge after conditions on land became suitable to live on again?

“The most amazing thing is that there are some amphibians that can reproduce on land and not have to seek water for the offspring’s initial development. After the male mates with the female, the fertilized eggs migrate under her skin and develop there. Once the little ones grow big enough, they burst from the enclosing skin, that they were nurtured in, and begin a life of their own in a nearby pond. Placental mammals are not the only ones that have live births.”

We both left the campground on good terms. We even exchange phone numbers.



Horride Revelations:

It was two weeks since we meet, when I get a call from that curiously dressed biologist, he wanted to know if I would like to come over to his place for a visit. Having nothing better to do that weekend, we decided that would be a good time for me to come over.

He lived in Winslow, on Bainbridge Island, right across the Puget Sound from Seattle. I drove the car the scenic route, down to Tacoma and then up the other side of the sound to Bremerton. I then took the road that went to the island. It was a nice relaxing drive but very long considering that I could have just taken the ferry over from Seattle instead. I eventually arrived at his little shack of a home, on the outskirts of Winslow. It was cool in the shade and damp, perfect newt weather, I thought, recalling what he had said the last time we had meet. I knocked at his door and he let me in. It was a small comfy place, with a large main room that was split into a living room and kitchen area and two bedrooms, he slept in one and the other one was his study.

Since it was dinner time for both of us, he offered to cook dinner for me. I have come to the opinion that no one can cook worse than I could, so it was an easy decision to make in allowing him to do the cooking. We had a spicy curried rice noodle dish with frog legs of all things.

“Is this how you get rid of the specimens once you have finished studying them?” I asked.

He laughed and said, “no, I get them from a nearby Vietnamese store just down the road a bit; although, I have been considering this method to get rid of a couple of lab students.”

We talked until it was very late in the night. When I looked at my watch, I noticed that I had somehow missed the last ferry that would take me back to Seattle. He told me not to fret over this and offered to let me sleep on the sofa that I was sitting on. I accepted the offer and stayed the night.

There is something about having to sleep in an unfamiliar place that puts me at an edge at first, it’s as if I am expecting something to be attacking me out of the darkness. I roamed his place, while he was asleep in his bedroom and ended up in his study. His library was extensive. Life on Earth and Sea, The Creation Myth, the Holy Bible, and The Encyclopedia of the Other Gods were some of the books he had. He somehow managed to have one of the ugliest of books I had ever seen, the Necronomicon. The cover of the book looked like it was made out of the facial skin of a screaming man but when I pick it up from the bookshelf, I noticed that it was just the woven pattern of the book’s cover, it did look convincing though.

“Can’t sleep yet?” someone said.

I almost had a heart attack then. I turned arround and noticed that my host was standing in the opened doorway. I said, holding up that ugly book that I had taken from the shelf, “No, not yet. I have to unwind a bit. Maybe I could read one of your books, like this one.”

He moved into the room, took the book that I was holding, sat down at his desk, put the book neatly on the desk’s top and motioned for me to sit down. He shook his head and said, “the only thing that this book will do for you, if you read it, is give you nightmares. How about a philosophical discussion instead?”

Once I sat down and got comfortable, he asked, “Do you believe in the Bible?”

I told him, point blank, “ if you are intersted in converting me or having a religious type of argument, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“No, I am not interested in your religious beliefs but in your philosophical point of view of it. I am particularly interested in what it says in the Bible about Mankind being created in God’s image and given sole dominion over the Earth and its undue feelings of superiority in God’s Creation as a result of this belief.”

“The only Origin Story I believe of is the story of man’s evolution from the other apes and the Bible should be taught as it was intended to be taught, as a guide to living, instead of as scientific fact. In my opinion, it is waste of time trying to foist it into the schools as science by describing it as original design. It still does not eliminate the fact that you have to have something in existence to create the universe, in which case, where did this being come from.”

He laughed at my outburst and said, “congratulations, you’re a fellow sceptic. What I really meant is whether you believe that Man is the only civilized creature that has evolved on this planet or not, as implied in the Bible.”

“That’s basically what I believe. Why?”

“Don’t you think that it is a shame that on this one small planet, the only one that we know of where life evolved, would only produce one species capable of developing civilization? That despite the Earth being billions of years old and capable of supporting life for more than 250 million years, that one animal alone, Man, should be considered the pinnacle being of this planet. What a preposterous notion!”

It was then that I noticed why he wore his clothes the way he did, showing the bare minimum. As he folded his hands under his chin, the sleeves of the robe he was wearing slid down to his elbows so that I could look at what he actually looked like. The skin of his hands and arms were glistening, as if coated with some sort of skin lotion and a mottled grey, in fact all of his skin was like that. I guessed that I did not notice it before because he had kept the lights down when we were talking earlier. What I found most disturbing of all was that he had horizontal slits along the neck that moved when he took a breath.

“What are you? Some sort of monster?” I asked.

He chuckled and cackled almost to the point if being out of breath. Once he had stopped laughing at my outburst he said, “no, it is Mankind, that is the monster here. Not us! We are of a race far older than the monkey men. While they were still swinging contently in their ancestral trees, our kind had dominion of the Earth. If it was not for an argument we made with the gods we worship, it would still be us who rule the world, not the unkept apes.

“For one million years, we have watched man destroy this once beautiful land, thinking that there would be nothing to pay for raping it. We are eagerly awaiting man’s last days, when man will revert to the animal it once was and we can reclaim the Earth as our own again!”

“STOP!!” I screamed, hoping that these horrid revelations not continue. “Why are you telling me this?”

He paused for a bit, as if considering how much more my sanity could take and continued.

“I have gone weary of observing these naked apes fiddle about and wish to return to the sea, to rejoin our people there. I am pleased that I have found my successor” he answered and he pointed with that pale gray right arm of his, to me!

“You can’t be serious,” I exlaimed, wishing for his last statement to be untrue but it was not the case.

He told me, “look around.”

After I did so, he asked, “do you feel comfortable here, even though it is so humid?”

I stared at him, open mouthed, at this question. “Yes, I do feel great here. For a long time now, I have been having problems breathing indoors, the air-conditioning units dry the air out too much and I have to run the humidifier at home to get my lungs back to normal.”

It then dawned on me, during his lecture on the folly of man, not once did he imply that I was one of the monkeys and said, “You mean that I really am one of you?”


“That’s exactly what I mean. Some of us, our species, are born in a form much like a human but after a time we revert to our true form and return to the sea. It is my time to change and you are going to continue to carry out my duties of observing the world that man has created.”

“Why are we even bothering to observe man in the first place?”

He then told me the story of a half-dead cat. I did not get all of the technical stuff he was trying to explain to me but this is roughly how he explained it to me.

Reality is a sequence of quantum states, one moment to the next, in an endless prosection. A physicist in the early 19th century postulated that there is a set of quantum states that are possible between each moment and the next and that the collapse from the set to a single possibility was what determined what happened from one moment to the next. This physicist, possibly named Schroedure, went as far as to state that the mere act of observing these possible state changes influenced the outcome of which one was chosen. The thought experiment that he came up with went like this, you take a cat and put him in a sealed box with something that would create an even chance of the cat dieing. After some moments time, is the cat dead or alive? The only way to determine this would be to open up the box and find out. The act of checking inside the box would determine which possibility it would be. He explained that this is the same effect he and others were using to force mankind to its extinction.

I slumpt in the chair I was sitting on, drained of emotion at what he had said and yawned.

“You should really try to get some rest now, we have a big day tomorrow,” he told me.

“What’s going to happen?”

“You’ll find out. For now, get some sleep.”

We both went back to our own beds and slept until dawn.


Ocean Migration:

The next day, chaos erupted.

It started out well, my host and I had breakfast together, I cooked this time, oatmeal with sugar is one of the things that I can cook. It was during Breakfast that we decided to drive out to La Push, so that he could await his final days on Earth near the ocean, before his transformation into a denizen of the ocean depths was complete.

It was when we left his home that things when horribly wrong. We had reach his car when he let out a painful gasp. It sounded literally like the sound of a fish out of water. I looked over to my companion and noticed that he was leaning on the car, trying desperately to breathe. I ran over to where he was and dragged him back into his home and laid him next to one of the humidifiers that he had left running.

After a while he recovered and his breathing became normal. “That didn’t go as planned,” I said. “Now what are we going to do?”

Once he had recovered enough to talk, he said, “I have waited too long to find you, someone to take over my duties here for me. Am I doomed to live out the rest of my days here and never be able to go to the sea?”

After taking a moment to look around at what we had available, I came up with a plan and I told him what it was, “My car is set up with a power converter so that I can plug in things and run them as if they were plugged into a wall outlet. We could just plug in one of these humidifiers in the car.”

“Great but I couldn’t even get to the car without collapsing. I don’t want to go through that again!”

“Didn’t you say that one of the keys to amphibians being able to living on land was that they kept the airways moist?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you get a towel and soak it with water, while I get a humidifier plugged into my car? When we are ready, just wrap the towel around your neck, like a prize fighter, and we’ll go for one more round.”

“It’s worth a try.”

With him bundled with a wet towel around his neck, we ran to my car and left his place. Since his transformation was pretty much complete by then, we decide to drive only as far as Neay Bay.

When we got there, he left the car and swam out to sea.


I’ll Be Seeing You:

As I write this final passage, the light of many computer monitors cast a ghostly glow about the room.

It has been years since I have taken up this remote, from our point of view, observation post, spying on the squabbling monkeys that I am charged to observe. In the time that I have been here doing this, the world has gone through the change in the way people communicate, making my efforts to sway them more easily.

Before now, our effect on them was minimal. It took so long for the information to get to us. We had to wait for scientific breakthroughs and supposed breaking news stories to be published in order for us to observe them. It is now much different, with high-speed Internet access to all of the web cams connected, we can witness things as they are happening. We even have the capability of turning on any cell phone on this planet to spy on them. In effect, we now control the fate of the entire World.

I now grow tired of their antics. In my dreams lately, I have had visions of people, my people, living under the sea, and wish to go to them.

Unlike my predasesor, I will not need to find a replacement. I have gained contol of one of the many spy satalites that they have put into orbit to spy on each other. It is ironic that we will be using it to spy on them too. We will be able to keep a watchful eye on the apemen.

Mankind has already doomed itself and we will not have to wait much longer for their end to come.

Soon, yes, very soon, we, the Deep Ones, shall return!
“Mankind’s reign upon the Earth shall come to an end.

The true masters of this world will rise up once more.

The Deep Ones!”

Stuck in a Mirror

Here's one that I thought of while listening to an Ozzy Osborne song.

Can you guess which one?

PS: This one is also set in "Boston", Oregon.

Stuck in a Mirror

By David J Reichen

Here we are, no hope of release
Waiting for time, itself to cease.

"I need some cash fast," I thought, just getting off of the MAX, looking for a place to hit. As the train pulled away from the stop I was at, the one in Chinatown, I made my way to one of the more peculiar streets in Boston, Oregon. The street goes North-South and East-West. On the Downtown side, which is where I was, it starts from the South and continues North, parallel to the Willamette River, at Lovejoy it crosses over the river and goes Eastward from there.

The shop that I chose was a run down hole in the wall that had a bunch of black volcanic islands on its facade. I went inside to case the joint out, noticed that most of the stuff piled on the shelves, tables and the counters in back had seen better days and decided that it was not worth my bother. As I was about to leave, I heard a voice coming from the back of the shop and turned arround to see who it could be. I could have sworn that there was not anyone back there.

"Can I help you?" repeated the shop owner that I had thought was one of the items on display.

I turned arround, decided against any judgement, good or bad, and headed over to the thing to take a closer look. He was short and had skin that looked like it was peeled off of a corpse and shrink wrapped onto him. Yes, it was a him, at least that is what I assumed. His eyes looked unusually big for the size of the head and seemed to bulge out of their sockets. He was dressed in what I would have called Peasant Chinese with a little Native American thrown into the mix.

"Do you see anything you would like?" he added, placing his hands on top of the glass counter that he was standing behind.

I looked at the hands, which gave the impression of being in the tub too long and noticed that the nails looked like cats' claws. Looking past the hands, I saw something that I just could not pass up heisting. It was a necklace with weird stars along the chain and a medallion with an Octopus type thingy on it. It would go great with the Goth outfit I have. I decided that I would just have to take it from him and made plans to do so.

I feinted another look around, then focused on the thing in front of me, smiled at it and said, "I am looking for something for my girl. What would you suggest?"

He shuffled around the counter and approached me, all five feet of him. He was very short and barely cleared the counter top which was why I thought he was just a bust set there for people to look at. He gestured off to the back corner of his hovel, went in that direction and said, "We have many nice things over here. If you will follow me, I will show you."
As soon as he turned his back to me, I shoved the poor wretch to the floor, picked up something big and smashed the counter top, got the necklace, took off out the door and ran down the street. As I turned the corner, I could have sworn that I heard him yell not to wear the medallion. Yeah, as if I would be taking the advice of a fugitive from a freak show.


When I got back to my pad, I went to the backroom, where I keep my special stash, and put the necklace on. I went to the mirror to check out how I looked with my newest piece of jewelry. As I looked into the mirror hanging on the wall, my reflection started to fade until it completely disappeared.

With a Chestershire Cat grin, I shouted, "SWEET! I am invisible, now to clean out the town."

Just then the door slammed shut.

I turned to the door, startled by the noise and went over to open it. It would not open. I tried the door knob. It would not turn. The key did not move the lock, which I did check and it was unlocked. I reached into my back pocket, took out a knife and tried to take the pins out of the door's hinges. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts and slicing my fingers in the process, I gave up, stood for a couple of seconds and took stock of the situation.

I then went over to the window to see if I could get out that way. Wouldn't you know it? As I moved the curtains aside and looked out, all I could see was black, the type of black that does not even hint of a trace of light. It was a complete and utter darkness. I tried to open the window but it would not budge, which may have been a good thing considering what was not out there.

"Great!" I exclaimed.

"I am locked in. The windows are stuck. Now how in the hell am I going to get out!" I screamed in frustration.

Let me tell you, if there was not a better time to panic, I have no idea when it would be. I spun around the room, looking for another way out and stopped when I looked at the mirror.

"It all started when I put on the necklace and looked in the mirror," I thought. I moved to the mirror and looked through it. Sure enough, the only thing missing was my reflection. I tried to take off the necklace but it seemed to have gained an infinite resistance to motion relative to me. It would not budge from my shoulders and kept on slipping from my fingers.

It was then that it dawned on me that I had been ignoring something important, a clue about my situation. I came very close to losing my mind.

I had assumed that I cast no refection because I could not see myself in the mirror that was mounted on the wall. What I had just realized was that I had another mirror in the room. The other mirror stood on the nearby table and was pointed at me. In that mirror, on the table, I could clearly see the reflection of me looking at it. I quickly turned arround, to look back at the mirror on the wall and saw that same mirror, that was on the table, placed so that I could see what was reflected on its surface. I could plainly see myself in that mirror too and saw something unexpected. I had assumed that I would just see my backside reflected in the mirror on the table since that mirror was behind me. What I saw however was this, I saw my frontside, like I was standing in front of a window. No matter how many times I switched from looking at the mirror on the wall and the mirror on the table, nothing changed what I had seen reflected in either mirror. It could only mean one thing to me. I had somehow gotten trapped on the other side of the mirror on the wall.

It suddenly began to get very hot in the direction of where that mirror hung on the wall and I looked at it once more. After a moment of staring at it, still not reflecting me, it began to warp, as if it was melting. Red cracks began to form upon its surface. I was showered by a hail of partially melted glass shards as the mirror exploded into shattered pieces. I managed to bring my arms up to protect my face from the flying glass but my cloths were cut into shredded wheat.

I looked into the space where the mirror was and all sanity left me. I screamed. I saw what looked like withering strands of fire reaching out in my direction. They leaped out from the chasm and wrapped themselves all around my body and burned. It felt like they were going straight through my flesh and bone before consciousness fled and I was freed from the overwhelming agony.


The call came in the morning, way too morning. I am a day person. I don't get up until after the sun is up.

The previous night, Chan Ing called me to let me know that somebody stole something from his curio shop. After he gave me a brief description of the item, I promised that I would bring it back to him if I noticed it anywhere. So it was no surprise that the police called me, it was just too early.

When I got to where they asked me to come to, I flashed my NSA badge at the officer guarding the door and he directed me to a room in back. I approached the coroner, crouching down next to the body. I smiled at the beauty of a woman who worked with the dead and asked "What's news?"

"Just up your alley, Chancey, I would say," she answered, rising up from the stiff to greet me.

"The neighbors complained about somebody screaming in the night. We sent out a patrol this morning to look into the complaint. They found him here when they looked to see if there was anybody around. They called me, I came here and then I called you.

"The body was found here and must have been facing the wall. There was a mirror on the wall, its shattered glass is all around here and there is a scorched section of wall where the mirror was. The clothes that he had on are ripped to shreds, probably from the flying glass."

After a pause, she continued, "We can't rule out somebody doing this to him but I would call it death by unnatural circumstances and leave it at that. The one thing that has me puzzled, which is why I called you here is that the body has these curious markings all over it. It looks as if he was lashed by whips of fire.

"The jerk is a known thief that has been having a spree lately, as you can see. No one is sorry that he is dead, not even his few neighbors. He probably died here looking at the mirror. I wonder if he liked what he saw."

I looked around a bit to see if there was a puzzle for the missing pieces I had and noticed a necklace around the neck of the body. I pointed to it and said, "I think that's Chan Ing's. He told me that some dufus made off with something like this yesterday. Do you mind if I take it over to him and check to see if it is his? I will sign an evidence voucher form for it so you have a record of me taking it from the scene."

"Why not. If it is his, he can have it back, we have already taken all the pictures we need of this place. It will take quite a while to return all of this back to their rightful owners, if they bother to claim it. I'm sure they would not complain about not having to send a cop on a delivery run," she answered.

We went over to the Officer in Charge. I explained the situation to him, ended up with the doohickey and went over to Ing's shop so that I could ask him if it was from his place and what it was.


"This is one of the Reapers of Souls," he explained. He put the necklace on and continued, "each of them is endowed with one of the seven deadly sins. This particular one is named Vanity. Legend has it that anyone committing the represented sin while wearing one will have their souls removed but they are harmless, as you can see."

"I guess so but if you looked in the mirror, you would not be exactly overwhelmed by vanity," I said, chuckling at my joke.

"On the contrary," he said, with a sniff, "I am as vain as anyone. I just accept that no matter how hard I wish it to be otherwise, in the end I will always be me."

He took off the necklace and put it on the counter top between us and I made my way to the door, to leave the place. I stopped in the doorway, turned to him and said, "do me a favor and lock that thing up somewhere safe. I think it actually might do what you said it does."

"Why bother?" he replied, as I stepped into the street. "It somehow makes it back to me no matter how hard I try to get rid of it. Good bye and thanks for returning it to me."

The only thing I could think of doing was shake my head and leave. As I moved down the street, I paused to look at the sign that was above the shop's door: "Chan Ing's, Treasures of Pnakot"

Laurelhearst Monster

While I am busily working on my next productions, I am posting a couple more of my stories inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

This first one is set in my hometown (kind of). I hope you enjoy it.

The Laurelhurst Monster

By David John Reichen

Little has been mentioned of the sudden and mysterious disappearance and subsequent return of the ducks from the pond at Laurelhurst Park. I only mention this here as a precaution, a warning, to those who dare to look below the surface and gaze at what hides therein.

The park and its pond are located in picturesque Boston, Oregon, on the east side of town. The pond is near 39th Ave, a busy thoroughfare that goes from the airport, that is on the banks of the Columbia River, to Milwaukee, a town that abuts Boston, and is on the East bank of the Willamette River. This is a busy road and is heavily trafficked, drivers frequently go right by the park without noticing the horror that lurks mere yards from where they pass.

The pond, of medium size, is ringed by paths which meander through the rest of the park and are wonderful for walking and other modes of recreation. Bushes and tress nestle along its banks. There is an island in the western half of the pond, which is overgrown and affords a perfect refugee for the visiting wildlife.

The disappearance of the ducks, as previously mentioned, happened in the evening, just after sundown, on a hot and muggy August night. An itinerant vagrant decided that the park would be an ideal place to pass the night away and picked one of the benches at the pond's side to eat his meal. As he was busily munching on his loaf of bread and stick of Tillamook Cheddar cheese that was given to him by one of the many charities of the fine city, he could not resist the squawking pleas of the ducks that were gathering there and threw a few crumbs their way.

If he was of stronger moral fiber, the events that followed would not have come to pass, the once peaceful pond would remain so, he would not have done the unthinkable and unforgivable thing of feeding the ducks the bread he had with him. I would like to make it clear and without a doubt that the feeding of ducks in and of itself is not a dangerous nor particularly evil thing to do and is quite pleasurable; however, what is being feed to them should be considered.

The bread this personage was eating was foul and loathsome. Unknown to the people that gave him the bread was this, the bread was a rye bread of poor quality and had gone moldy. The bread had a bad taste to it but the man continued to eat the bread, perhaps to spite the gathered flock. After a few more bites, however, he became weakened, mesmerized, out of his mind by the ducks staring at him, their nascent insisting quacking, imploring him to feed them. And, he did so.

There are forces in the universe, good, evil and sometimes ambivalent which toy with the fates of man. These ancient forces, only need the slightest of opportunities to temporarily break or circumvent that which holds them at bay, allowing them to wreak havoc upon the rest of the universe. One such force, once know in Ancient Egypt or was it prehistoric Nubia, is able at times to control the very minds of those who are in dream or in a crazed mental state, such as overcome by intoxicants. It was the bread that the vagrant was eating that allowed this force to gain a foothold on reality, bringing about the ensuing chaos. The bread was infested with that well known mold that produces Lysergic Diethylamide Acid. The whole gathered group, both man and crazed waterfowl, were stoned, intoxicated by LSD.

Within minutes, the placidly eating ducks had become a raving drug crazed mob of feathered beaks. They swarmed their estranged benefactor, where he sat, attacking hand, face and other miscellaneous other parts of his body until he was reduced to a bruised, bloody and soon to be a very dead corpse. The ducks, having drained all amusement value from their bread dispenser, sought other bloody pleasures and invaded into the rest of the park.

They snuck upon a couple, deep in each others embrace. Waddling, step by shuffling step, they moved closer to the bench where they were sitting. The ducks moved silently, without a sound, giving the couple no warning of the danger closing in on them, until the flock of demented beasts attacked.

I became alerted to the dangerous situation developing around me when the couple gave a startled scream as the ducks came at them with their hard blunt bludgeoning bills. I rushed over to where the couple were valiantly defending their lives. I accessed their plight and decided that I would need the help of another to rescue them. I ran, as quickly as I could, to a group of people, similarly being harassed by the ducks at the park, and convinced them to throw me their disk, that they had been using to play fetch with their dog with, to me. They gave me their disk and fled the park to safer ground, guarded by their fearless protector, that they had been playing fetch with moments ago. I took the disk and scrawled arcane symbols that I had seen in a book that I had read and tossed it into the pond and it slowly sank below the surface.

Normal people are complacent and ignorant of the truth of this world around them and never dream of what secrets lay in wait just beyond the threshold of perception or is that preconception. Old and extremely ancient things, hidden and confined for their horrendous acts perpetrated when this world was young and virtually devoid of life. They are locked away from us mortals by means unknown by modern man. Bounding and seething with hate and the desire for vengeance against the Elder Gods, who imprisoned them, they and their supporters await in regions of time and space where no one should go or think of breaching.

I, however, am no longer a normal man but a servant of the one Ancient One that they could not confine, the one whose mind can be in us all. The Egyptians of the Upper Kingdom knew of him. The one called Nyarlathotep, Messenger of the Other Gods. Being one of his, it was not a difficult matter for me to recall the correct means to pierce through the barrier imposed on the one I was freeing.

Down the disk sank, to the muddy bottom of the pond. After it had settled for a moment, it began to glow, as if it had become radioactive with energies of unknowable potentials, bridging the gap between the here & now and that other's place, freeing it from its confinement to roam the Earth once more.

(Basically, I wrote a get out of jail card for the monster that lived in the muck at the bottom of the pond so that it could come out and play for a bit. If you get my drift?)

It rose up from the pond, a seething mass of blackness, tentacled and many eyed. The thing was like what that mad Arab Al Hazrad could have come close to describing. It slithered and sloshed onto the banks of the pond and moved to where I was standing, waiting to give it instructions. I spoke to it in a long dead language that was once used in what the Ancient Chinese called Xiyu, the Chinese now call it the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, a few millennia ago and it did what I commanded it to do.

It went up the hill to aid the couple that were beginning to lose their battle for life. It reached out and grabbed the ducks in its long appendages and ate them, one by feathered one, as they squawked in indignation at having had their fun so rudely interrupted.

It is a blessing that the human species can only perceive so much before their minds turn themselves off and refuse to function until it is safe once more in the realm of reality. The couple feinted when they saw the thing that dwelt in the muck of the pond munch on its duck dinner and were therefor not witnesses as to what came later.

The other rampaging ducks took flight and left like tormented bats out of the hell that the park had become for them, as the thing attacked them as well. When the rest of the park was cleared of the ducks, silenced reigned once more and peace was restored which had so recently been broken. The thing from the muck moved to the pond, took the person responsible for the outbreak and sank back below the surface of the pond to its watery home at the bottom of the pond. Such is the price that must be paid when the gods are concerned.

Eyewitness accounts of these events have never been published in the newspapers since they are not in the business of reporting on such fantastical and unbelievable things. The police, however, took statements from those who were present and are on file for anyone who might dare to read them. You can still see posters of that one lost soul around town but he will slowly fade away into the buried past; hopefully, memories of these events will disappear.

I have only two comments to mention before this tale is finished and are as follows:

If some shabbily dressed person comes up to you and asks for some money to buy bread to feed the ducks, do him a favor and give him a few spare coins. He may be forever cursed to feed the ducks and they do not like to go hungry.

And, please, for God's sake, be aware of what you feed the ducks!