“Come downtown,” the message said on my social media page, “They’re planning to burn down city hall.”

It was a note from my friend David. He was in downtown Reno watching as the shit hit the fan on the evening of Saturday, May 30.

Grabbing my camera, I raced to the door, kissing my wife before I left.

“Be careful, please,” she said as she shut and locked our door.

That was about five-and-a-half hours ago, and as I sit down to reflect on the events that unfolded, I feel a mix of emotions – anger, sadness, frustration.

It supposedly began with a peaceful protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. What started as a gathering of hundreds at City Plaza soon swelled to over a thousand as people from all walks of life joined in, chanting slogans of justice and equality.

I arrived in Reno in less than 30 minutes, parking on Second Street near the Aces Stadium.

As the crowd marched through the streets, their voices echoing off the buildings, there was a palpable sense of danger. Tensions simmering beneath the surface, a faction within the protest turned to violence, defacing buildings and setting fires.

City Hall bore the brunt of the chaos. Windows shattered, fires burning, the building filling with smoke. It was a sobering sight.

As the violence escalated, I found myself in the heart of the storm. With my camera, I documented the destruction one click at a time when I became a target.

A figure wearing a black helmet, astride a red and black motorcycle, caught sight of me and charged in my direction. With a crash, the attacker rammed into me, sending me sprawling to the ground, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs.

As I struggled to regain my footing, another assailant emerged from the crowd, brandishing a skateboard like a weapon. With a sickening thud, it connected with my back, sending waves of pain shooting through my body.

I watched and heard the skateboard snap, one half flying by me and into the gutter, the other a jagged piece of wood used to stab at me.

Disoriented and with no help in sight, I braced myself for the next blow, only to find myself surrounded by a mob of angry faces, their fists and feet raining down on me like a torrential downpour.

In the ongoing mele, I lost my grasp on my camera. It shattered against the pavement, but I had the presence of mind to grab the SD chip from the smashed frame.

With adrenaline coursing through me, I freed myself from the grasp of my attackers, scrambling to my feet, and dashed for safety north up Center Street, where law enforcement was gathering to repel rioters. Finally, behind the forming lines of law enforcement and the Nevada National Guard, a REMSA ambulance crew offered me medical aid.

As they checked me over for wounds or broken bones, a Reno Police Sergeant approached me to get my statement. I filled out the paperwork he gave me, handing him the SC chip before being released to head home.

It was a lonely walk to my truck and even lonelier driving home as I felt empty. All that and not one photograph to show for the shit I put myself through, though I knew it was more than that.

My wife hugged and kissed me as I pushed in the front door. She had been watching the riots on her cell phone and worried about my safety all evening till she heard my key turning in the lock.

My body will be sore tomorrow. But tonight, my heart hurts.

It’d been several weeks since the latest international crisis had begun. Now over, Charlene and Will needed desperately escape their home, their place of confinement.

After spending a week dining, dancing and spa-ing, the couple returned home.

Following dinner the next evening, Will came down with a massive ache on the left side of his head. Two-days later, he sought medical aid.

His usual doctor could find nothing wrong, offering only a pain med and the name of a specialist. By day four, Will lay in their bed, with the room darkened to prevent the shooting pain daylight brought.

Not wanting to, but finding it necessary, Charlene began changing out their bed linen. She discovered, not only spots of dried blood, but a hole in his pillow case.

“Seems heavy, to me.”

Taking it, Will agreed as he began examined it. It was then that he discovered the large lump inside.

Pulling the case apart, Will rooted through the batting and pulled an insect from it. The black-brown thing wiggled violently, trying to escape, exposing a lengthy proboscis and an explanation for the blood spots.

“Lucky it found your pillow and didn’t hatch inside your head,” the university’s entomologist said.

The Dragon screams into the afternoon air, bursting into the far-reaches of Earth’s atmosphere and towards perfect darkness.
Below, and with several cities burning due to rioting and violence, the two man crew has no idea that their journey to space comes at the end of civilization.
Satan hails it as a total victory.
And the Book of Revelation states it so.

You see “black man murdered by white cop.” I see “innocent man murdered by corrupt cop.” Others see “citizen murdered by government.”

One very old man, Tomas’ Alcala, a seer, watched as she approached his small patio. She hesitated for a moment, feeling his energy as it raced out to meet hers.

“I know it’s you,” he said, as she finally approached.

“Who am I you silly old man?”

“La Llarona, of course, and far more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

“Flattery will not save you.”

“I did not think so.”

“Then be dead, old man.”

“Before I go, and I know I must, will you do an old man a favor?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you sit and enjoy a drink with me as I’ve not had a woman grace me with her presence in years.”

“You are a silly old fool,” she said, “But yes, as I’ve not been invited to sit and drink with anyone in more years than you’ve been alive.”

“Thank you and pardon me as I step inside to get the Cuervo.”

Within a minute the man came back with two glasses filled quarter of the way with tequila. He hand on to his guest.

“Cheers,” she said as he downed his in one swift gulp.

She followed suit. No sooner had she emptied her glass than she pierced the night with a shrill scream and doubled over in pain.

“What have you done to me, you old fool?” she hissed.

He smiled, “I added a touch of chlorine bleach to our drinks to help kill the virus.”

She shrieked again, a wail so high pitched that the neighborhood dogs began to bark and car alarms start blaring. With fiery eyes, she glared at him and vanished in a blink of an eye.

Señor Tomas’ Alcala was found dead the next morning. By then he had been taken into the bosom of Santa Muerte, who welcomed him as a hero.

Throughout the next 60 days, the woman in white appeared and then disappeared. In her wake she left left nurses and doctors sick and fighting for their lives. She did likewise to law enforcement officers, paramedics and firefighters.

So many places, a woman, acting as if she were there to help, could go and so many places she could spread her disease. But then, the unthinkable for her happened.

At first, all children were immune to the virus as she spread it from one place to another. However, she could not protect them from the virulent sickness as it struck. one child after another, down.

She screamed as the first of the children were taken to the morgue, never to breathe again. She screamed louder when she watched the woman she called ‘sister,’ accept their small bodies to her bosom.

She returned to her old ways for a week, perhaps two. Then, she returned with a vengeance that seemed as strong as her hatred for what she’d done centuries before.

Determined to prevent any more children from dying, she focused solely on the elderly. They dropped by the hundred in her deathly wake.

He were taken in to the arms of the lady she had once call ‘sister.’

“Jus’ be careful when you go down by the creek.”

“Is the water deep?”

“No.”

“Fast, then?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Cold?”

“Probably.”

“Then why the warning?”

“The salamander.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Okay.”

That damned salamander was twice the size of a gator and it swallowed him in one gulp.

Manny and Julio tucked themselves under the awning to the left of the school doors, where it was the darkest. This is where they did business most nights and were waiting for their next customer.

Across the street and catty-corner from the school came a lone figure; a woman in a short dress, cut above her knees, with a flowing white train breezing behind her. She was tall, dark hairs and shapely, definitely a Latina.

The two men watched in silence as she casually walked by. Their surprise was more than mild, when she looked their way and smiled broadly.

She continued to walk down the uneven sidewalk, her heel-clicks growing fainter with each step.

It was Julio that said it first, “I don’t feel so well all of a sudden.”

“Me neither,” Manny confessed.

“Weird, right?” asked Julio.

“Yeah, dude,” answered Manny, adding, “I’m gonna head home.”

“Good idea.”

The woman continued down the street, passing beyond one overhead light to the next. Soon she was joined by another woman; also of Latin descent and dressed much more conservatively.

“I she you’ve done away with your mask,” the woman said.

“Why not, it is the 21st century after, sister.”

“Don’t call me sister.”

“Whatever.”

“Is this necessary?”

“Is what necessary?”

“Spreading this virus?”

“Yes and it’s easier on my vocal chords, too.”

“You know it isn’t any of these innocent peoples fault don’t you, that you drown your babies over a worthless man?”

“There’ no one innocent here or anywhere,” the woman in white said as she faded into the darkness, leaving the other woman by herself.

Soon that woman, too had faded into the night time.

Filled with slot canyons, Capitol Reef National Park lives in the south-central Utah desert. I love exploring slot canyons.

Experienced slot-monkeys know to tell someone where they’re going and to never go alone. Breaking both rules, I went in with only my day-pack.

Now, should I come to a fork, I’ll pick either left or right, and will stick to that, making back-tracking easier should I come to a dead-end. On this day though, I got lost.

To make matters worse, a thunderstorm had begun unleashing buckets of rain somewhere beyond both the hearing and sight of the canyon’s bottom. I had no way of knowing what was coming my way, until it was too late.

By that afternoon, a stream of water began trickling, then flowing, and finally cascading through the slot. After chimney climbing till it was too wide, I chanced wading the torrent, where a misstep swept me under.

The slot narrowed, trapping me when my pack got caught. Almost out of air, I slipped my straps and corked through the rest of the gap.

It spit me out into a shallow pool ten feet below the slot. Landing on my back, my head bounced off the rock floor as small rocks, pieces of dry wood, a couple of drown lizards and a half-eaten deer carcass pelted me.

Fairly battered, severely scraped-up and bruised, I scrambled down the rocky ledge and limping back to my truck, never seeing my day-pack again.

Finally, I rid myself of all those rejection notices accumulated over the years by shredding them. I had another plan for them, but then I remembered being eleven.

Mom and Dad collected Green Stamps.

With sheets of stamps about the house, I decided to use a few to redecorated my half of the bedroom that I shared with my brother. I wet and applied a couple of hundred to my wall, top to bottom, side to side.

That evening, when my parents saw what I’d done, the ass-whipping commenced. It’s this memory that sprang to the forefront of my mind while contemplating wallpapering the room where I write, with rejection slips.

The shredder’s grind is a comforting when compared to the slap of a belt being yanked through pant loops. It’s also better than the shouts of an angry wife.