Dear Friends,

My assistant, that rancid and untrustworthy bastard snuck into my lab after hours. He mixed up my chemicals. Come swiftly, now, with the antidote, Nurse Ratchid!

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

And yet again…

Dear Friends,

They came again to my fevered dreams. Strange but familiar.

Hic Finis Est

S

They came again…

Dear Friends,

They came again in dreams, dancing on unseen strings gyred to an invisible Puppet Master's dexterous digits. The music resolved this time from a noise akin to the crinkling of waxed paper sheathing shards of glass and sand.

Hic Finis Est,

S

A Visitor in Dreams…

Dear Friends,

A visitor arrived in dreams last night. It did not speak, but behind my eyelids, between my ears, somewhere in the vicinity of my brain's Hippocampus, there was a buzzing. It slowly resolved into music and emotions unspoken. I cannot recall what it all meant.

Hic Finis Est,

S

Strange David

Strange David

S. Solomon ©2013

I got mugged a few weeks ago. A shadow in the alley put out my lights. I came to just before dawn. My head hurt. My shirt, wallet and right shoe were missing. When I tried to stand up I promptly keeled over. My left lower leg and my entire foot did not seem to belong to me. Trying to stand again produced the same result as before. Then two cops come strolling along.

They asked me my name and what had happened to leave me sans shirt and one shoe as I sat in the dirt by the shrubs. I related my best recollection of the mugging. I told the cops that my leg and balance were out of order and asked for an ambulance. First, they needed to write a report. Five minutes or so later, they did summon an ambulance and I was soon lifted onto a gurney, wheeled over to the vehicle and thence transported to the nearest hospital.

Two weeks later I was moved to a facility for physical therapy; the goal was to restore the nerve that travels from the side of my left calf to my ankle. The exercises and electrical stimulation sort of worked,; just a little. Nonetheless, my balance restored with the help of a leg brace, the insurance company determined that I was too ambulatory to require the medical ministrations, bed and meals provided by the good folks of Meager Estates; Your Interest Is Our Top Priority. Thus, I am now convalescing in an assisted care place, a log cabin in the woods of western New England where people who are mainly very old go to smoke cigarettes on the porch and eat a lot of red meat and potatoes before the hearse comes to carry away their mortal shroud once finally, indisputably shorn of all vitality. 

Not all the folks here at Terminal Meadows; Nestled in a Tranquil Setting, are elderly. I’m not.  The Other Steve, the World’s Greatest Authority, is not. He just yammers on about any topic that floats through his cratered consciousness to grab his focus for a few seconds before he fritters into a confusion of random words on subjects ranging from the sex lives of mollusks to The Truth About the Kennedy Assassinations. But, everybody else is old is except one other guy. He is the real and most intriguing subject of this little literary explateration. He is Strange David.

Strange David is deaf, mute and schizophrenic. So, of course, he is unable to really participate in conversation nor relate to others the messages spoken by the silent voices beamed into his skull by unnamable phantoms hiding in moonbeams and cracks in the pavement. His continence is typically stone like. Even in repose, his brow remains unflinchingly furrowed and the corners of his crusty lips static, as though they were carved into a grimace. He is trapped behind a visage that only expresses bewildered horror.

Strange David sleeps fully clothed and in a fetal position on the floor by his bedroom door. He keeps the light on and his eyes open through the dark hours. He rises at dawn for the first of his dozen cups of coffee. His primary mode of communication is nodding his head. One can, however, reliably get a reaction from him by coming around a corner or walking up from behind into range of his innate proximity sensor. That range is about two feet and his response to the sudden alert is to leap from his toes as though they were spring loaded. Strange David can reach a height of about twelve inches straight up when he’s good and startled.

Yet, he never blinks. He never smiles. Well, he almost never smiles. Over the course of my first two weeks in his company, I only once saw him look me in the eye and then flash a wisp of a smile as transient as a single beat in a racing heart. We were eating breakfast across from each other at the common table. As usual each morning at 8:10AM, Strange David stared into his big bowl of Cheerios® as he swiftly slurped overburdened spoonfuls of milk, plenty of sugar, and bleached and artificially colored, pre-masticated, compressed gruel into his resolutely frowning maw.

Then, for no obvious reason, he looked up at me, milk dripping over his chin. He flashed that brief, thin smile before it disappeared. It was like watching a glistening, soft seeming pebble stolen from sight by a black wave’s exhausted crest. Strange David instantly bowed his head again to gaze unblinking into, perhaps through, the white puddle and bobbing bits of kid’s cereal beneath the soggy, grizzled vanishing point of his jaw. He held his big spoon clenched still and upright in his fist as though a weapon or a torch light.

Thus, normal programming on the Strange David channel resumed and remains uninterrupted. The smile proved to be a one-off, like a never repeated deep space message from a sentient race living in the empty, cold gloom around the dying ember of a very distant star. The meaning of the message can never be decoded nor even inferred. Some things must remain mysteries. Some things may only happen once.

Hic Finis Est,

S

The following is a brief bit of typically thoughtful prose composed in the aftermath of accidental comedy that was my nation's most recent Presidential election. Ah, the Mystery that is Democracy! As giggles subsided into gasps echoing down the bleak halls of recent history, I turned my literary attention to a true crisis in our time.

Yours in Confabulation, S. 2012

Cannabis Deprivation

Today, we have a President who has boldly sort'a proclaimed that he sort'a, kind'a smoked, uh, well, er, pot, actually choom or boo, in a time when our children need to hear this message. The ravages of Cannabis Depravation among our youth, particularly young, white males, is leading to a scourge of bad music and even physical deformities. The Lawrence Stanley Denton Foundation has well documented the instances of shrinking Hilarity Glands and overactive production of Seriousity neurotransmitters in the brains of weed starved kids. Another effect of the syndrome is formerly luxurious blond locks of hair turning white and falling out in clumps from the pates of previously handsome fellows in their late teens to early twenties.

In the most severe cases the Mary Jane malnourished are known to spontaneously grow wingtip shoes that cover their webbed feet, sprout uncomfortable worsted wool from their bodies in the form of poorly fitting and itchy suits and their faces blossom with horn-rimmed glasses that encrust their dilated eyes. They can eventually can be found prowling the streets of suburbia for days at a time accosting strangers with pleas that innocent, horrified citizens buy insurance from them. No. No. This is no joking matter. Yes. Yes. As the Revered St. Zimmerman said: "Everybody must get stoned!"

Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the immensity of the tragedy of Cannabis Deprivation Syndrome. Take the impact on just one community, Lavatown, NV. Once a thriving small city of suburban tracts surrounding the principle employer, The Lawrence Stanley Denton LavaLamp Factory, it is now a virtual ghost town. In the interest of full disclosure, The LSD estate endowed the research provided in this monogram through the good works of the Lawrence Stanley Denton Foundation, created as some small amends for the tragic proceeds of his cultural and financial empire and personal, willful abandonment of sanity while violating every law of god and man.

In any case, Lavatown, is largely abandoned. The LSD LavaLamp factory is shuttered and decaying, inhabited only by murders of crows and colonies of rabid bats that eat rampant beetles as big as small cars and gnaw on the skulls of hairless rats as large as cats. The streets of the once fair city are empty but for the clumps of white hair blowing like tumble weed in the desert wind. All of the grown ups have moved on, leaving their tidy homes for the safe shelter of dumpsters in Reno. They had no choice, of course. Their children were quite mad, prowling the streets with mom’s Pyrex mixing cups, knocking on doors that would never be answered, pleading “May I have a cup of choom? Will you buy insurance? Please vote for Willard “Mitt” Romney.”

In the early days of this catastrophe, The Centers for Unease Control (CfUC) proposed dumping large quantities of bong water into the local reservoir. The Bong Water Association, a major lobbying group, opposed this action and Congress refused to authorize Federal Agents to seize bongs except in the case of a Member of Congress of the opposing party getting caught actually huffing down a choker of kind bud. Thus, once again, our legislators found themselves in deadlock and reconciled to permit orgies in the offices of Senators with seniority to continue unabated, untaxed, and without interruption. However, it was stipulated that no more than three grams of the finest Peruvian cocaine, six magnums of expensive champagne, and four Thai trannies would be delivered between normal business hours (every ten minutes during two hour breaks between 1:PM and 4:PM). Otherwise, all the coke, hookers and booze was fine. But, no pot! “We have to draw the line somewhere!” proclaimed Senator Comedentures (R-AZ).

So, the CFuC turned to Plan B. Without explicit authorization, out of desperation, the Foggers, helicopter born bombs of a super-double-secret mixture of MDMA, 2Cb, and NO2 were deployed over the entire D. C. area. Alas, the only thing accomplished toward staunching the advance of the plague of Zombie Insurance Kids for Romney was the melting of their already quashed egos. Yes, already lacking any self-esteem or self-regard, the ego loss had no effect. The brave folks who executed this extraordinary and perilous mission did, however, come home to giggle quite a lot and hug everybody.

On September 12, 2012, Secret President of The World, Cheney V.4x, was informed of the unsanctioned and failed mission that he had sanctioned. He then made the most difficult decision of his life since he had to figure out if he wanted pickle relish on his hot dog, and mustard as well as ketchup. He ordered the “nukeyurl bombin’ of Lamptown.” “Do Belize, too. I’m sick of those whiners and I don’t care if they’re bilingual. I am too. Si, comprendo par lez voose!?!”; he continued. “Oh, do New York City, too! Pronto!!! Enough with that Jew bastard Mayor. Don’t tell Obama that Bloomass and The City are smoke. You don’t have to. Okay! You’ve got your fuckin’ orders.”

Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds after the order went out to Secret Military Command, fourteen million souls were no more casting a shadow upon liberty and All that is Right. Of those relieved of their corporeal baggage were some four-thousand and sixteen zombified Insurance and Romney election workers. A grateful nation bowed its head into a pile of radioactive ashes raining from a dark sky to give thanks to The Secret President and good riddance to Belize, that odious City of New York, its Jew bastard three-term Mayor, and noisy kids who smoked flowers.

Hic Finis Est, © Solomon 5/26/2012

Secrets and Riddles

Dear Friends,

True Secrets cannot be told, but they are delivered in a case of steel and barbed wire and must first be known by the Strange Teller who cannot answer your own question delivered to you by seeming accident. Answers to such riddles cannot be solved, but only known. No answers can be delivered by any sage, demigod nor tutor. Real Secrets can only be known and their answers earned. The answers, should they arrive, are only for you, you.

Hic Finis Est,

S