The Objects sat in the quiet space of the gods and the plains of baser thought.

“Let’s be quick, before we are medicated,” whispered Reason.

Loneliness and Sadness swept through and were gone, making their energies known.

“There is nothing quick about any of this,” Elder Object said.

Then Middle Object protested, “Why must we be so worthless.”

No answer, for none was to be had.

Younger Object said “Let’s do something fun!”

Memory, stenographer of the group screamed, “Sex, lets have sex.”

Elder Object cried, “Pipe down, Memory. Recall ‘What can’t get up…”

The two Objects and Memory finished, “…can’t get out.”

Id laughed, “Christ, old boy, you need some new material.”

Meanwhile, Machismo stood at the mirror, touching itself, laughing like an idiot while its companions, Fear and Paranoia hid away, wrapped in each others comfort.

Middle Object snorted, “Why’s it always the female that calls for sex and has to transcribe these meetings?”

“Because we’re caught up in a man’s world of male pronouns,” Intelligence answered before anyone could interrupt.

“Go sit down, Intelligence, you weren’t invited to the party,” Ego shouted.

“Quiet, Ego!” Elder Object commanded.

Ego slunk off, butt-hurt and angry into a shadow, “Screw you, Freud!”

“Food!” called Hunger.

Not one response came as it loudly grumbled away to fend for itself.

Elder Object finally answered Middle Object’s question: “Who said it was a ‘she’ or ‘her’. ‘They’ is plain enough.”

Intelligence quoted, “But pure language! To be or not…”

“You can go away too, Mr. I.,” Elder Object said.

“Talk about the needing for new material,” Middle Object declared.

Younger Object cried out, “I wanna drink, I wanna forget.”

“What do you want to forget?” Middle Object asked.

“How worthless we each are,” Younger Object frowned.

“If we drink,” Memory said, pointing at Machismo, “We fuck, we forget our worthlessness and I want that.”

Elder Object snored, fell asleep, having heard all the machinations all before.

“Let’s fuck,” Memory shouted merrily, as Elder Object sputtered out wet and sticky.

Anger got pissed and Humor giggled.

Food was in short supply once he slipped beyond the fence. And while it didn’t take long for him to realize he wasn’t being chased and that no one would ever be chasing him again, he quickly became aware that he might starve to death if he didn’t reacquaint himself with wild-game hunting.

Strangely, he befriended a pair of dogs, an Australian shepherd and a Collie, who seemed more than willing to trade their wildness for a rub on the belly and a scratch behind the ear. These new companions proved to be wonderful hunters and often returned with small game to be cooked and shared.

They spent near three-years moving about the wilderness, hunting and surviving, where learned to eat foods that would disgust another ordinary and rational person. Soon the clothing he’d escaped with were worn away and eventually he began to wear the skins of the larger animals he’d killed or had found already dead and partly eaten.

In that time, he’d not seen another human being and had learned to be alone and solitary much like a male bear. Slowly, he made his way back through the mountains, passing through what once had been Redding and later Susanville.

Neither appeared as they had when people inhabited them, nor did they look like his dreams, the ones he held onto in order to cope with being being imprisoned and forced to labor for those he did not know. Because of sadness, he didn’t linger, proceeding on into what had once been Nevada.

It was south of Susanville and north of the long forgotten and overgrown, weed infested Janesville Cemetery, that he found an older horse, one familiar with the human, and who at first was indisposed to being ridden again, but who after some gentling became another companion the was grateful to have. The Bay proved to be gentle and seemed to enjoy carrying him along barebacked.

Little looked the same as he dropped in the Cold Spring Valley. Overgrown with weeds and tangles of thistles and vines, collapsed overpasses and fallen bridges.

Nine days later, he passed through the Hidden Valley and over the hillside from which he used to escape. The valley, Spanish Springs, was empty, devoid of life, save for a number of wild horses and a pack of dog that looked to be half-bred with coyotes or visa-versa.

This had been home and now it wasn’t. While he stayed for two days, he finally decided to continue southward.

Finally, he began: “It was the year 2012, a year of unrest that it began. I was many years younger than I am today and by 2015, the upheaval was so bad that martial law was enacted. When that didn’t work, they arrested people and moved them into camps for their protection.”

“What is a ‘camp,” Grandser?” a child asked.

“It’s like a village,” the old man answered, “Only we were made to live there and could never leave.”

“How did you get food then, Grandser, if you could not leave?” another little voice asked.

“Men brought it to us at the end of our work day,” Grandser answered, “And I was put in Camp Nine.”

“How many is ‘nine?”

Grandser held up all eight fingers and a thumb.

“I was there until the year 2020, the year of the Grand Pan,” he said, “I escaped during that year when prisoner in the camp began rioting. I was to be killed because I had killed a man who stole my food…”

“I would kill a person who stole my food, too” another small voice spoke out.

“Shh,” hissed Junior, “Let Grandser continue and quit speaking while he is talking. Mind your elder!”

“But what is the ‘Grand Pan,’ Junior?”

Grandser rescued Junior before he could answer, “It killed many people, more people than there are now in the whole world. Men, women, children fell dead quicker then they could be buried. This is what I believed started the rioting — this and fear.”

“But what was it that did the killing?”

“Something that you could not see unless you had a special tube to look through?”

“A tube?”

“Like a hollow tree, only much smaller like this,” Grandser demonstrated, holding his hand up to show the size of what he meant, using his index finger and thumb.

“You do not make sense, Grandser,” a boy near the back started, “Something we can not see? A tube that is a hollow log? I think you are lying!”

RonaSpace: the distance between people that prevents cooties.

Dove Chocolate tastes better than Dove Soap.

Wrote the day after Washington State’s Mt. Saint Helen blew and thought at the time it might be the start of a song. So silly. Can hardly believe it’s been 40-years since…

Spirit Lake
May be gone
Harry Truman
May be gone

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

The she blew
And his legend
It grew and grew
Harry’s big end

Spirit Lake
It is Gone
And Harry
He’s gone

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

The Mountain
She will renew
After her pain
Nature so true

Harry is gone
And Spirit Lake
Remains gone
Legends live on

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

May 19, 1980

Work crews were quickly established by the overseers. They made life a living hell for the weak, disabled, the starving, which there was much of the latter days of concentration.

Since he was ‘single,’ he was assigned housing with a female, a girl actually barely 14-years old. He was threatened with violence if he failed to procreate with her by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, she was sickly, terribly frightened and cried for her mother nearly every night. Eventually, she died – possible from starvation or maybe a broken heart – but probably both.

With her death he was transferred to a barracks where other single men lived. It was while confined to this open floor plan that a young man, much larger, stronger and athletic came to live after being reassigned from a different living facility.

Soon, he made it clear that he was the boss within their barracks. And with that, he began stealing the food cubes, a single days ration of nutrients each man was given.

He decided that taking from the preteens and teens was not enough. He began taking the food from some of the older men.

When it happened to him, he let it pass the first time. It was the beating that he was subjected to the second time that convinced him that the bully would not be allowed to get away with his actions.

The third time, he struck the bully so hard in the side of the neck, that the much larger man fell sideways and struck his head on the floor. He lingered for three days before he died.

Took’em nearly half-a-century, but hippies finally managed to get marijuana legalized and haircuts outlawed.

From my disorganized card table writing desk, in a dimly lit room we call the ‘library,’ on a blustery afternoon in May 2020, I am writing. There are a few things on my mind including my wife’s health, my health the Corona Virus, the continued Nevada state lock down to prevent its spread.

Those are the ‘bad’ things caught in the plaque of my aging mind. Other things pushing their way about up top is the fact the both my wife and I are healthy, we have a roof over our heads, good food, clean clothes and each other.

But for right now I’m in another place, my secret tree house, and no, you cannot come and visit with me while I’m here. It is simply for me.

It is where I dream, imagine, work things out in my head. It is my lonely place and no foreigners are served here, because I’m the only one with a passport this this kingdom.

Feeling above it all, I realize that should I climb any higher or move my fort closer to the stars, that I might tumble down, hurt myself. That is how fragile a writers mind is in real life.

You have one of these places, too – I’m sure of this. Only you call it something different and it looks, smell and feels different from mine.

Your tree house might be your dinner table, bed, couch, the attic or basement, an old outbuilding, the bed or cab of your truck, or maybe the table you eat at while on break from your job. And no – I am not allowed, and no one should be allowed entry because you are the only one with the proper papers to gain entry.

Those papers might be a notebook, a piece of typing paper or a computer. It might include a keyboard, a pen, a pencil or all of the above in which you mark passage from your kingdom to the other world, the one that is work-a-day, pedestrian as the upper crush is wont to say, the place were the cracks in the sidewalk or gravel road trips up from time to time.

And while I suspect you, like the hundred others that may or may not read this, I don’t expect a response. All I can hope for, even without knowing the results, is that this inspires you to feel, think and write.

The first days of martial law were difficult. He had spent much of the time prior to the great lock down preparing for that specific eventuality.

Not only did he locate a hiding spot in the hills above and west of their home, he inlaid it with canned foods and bottled water. Elsewhere, he dug a deep hole and using a large plastic construction bucket with a lid, his his families important papers, a few pictures and a number of books, including the family bible.

He had been forced to escape early when soldiers arrived in the neighborhood and began rounding people up. He engaged with them, having fired a couple of shots at them from his rifle, as they loaded his wife and son onto a transport vehicle.

He never saw then after that and he ended up hiding for several days in the small coyote den he’d found earlier. He lived off the canned food and water he had with him as he waited for the soldiers, who had searched three weeks for him, left the area.

Eventually, and in great sadness he started over the hill to the far valley and across the grassy plain of Hungry Valley towards northern California. He intended to pass through Susanville, skirt Redding and make his way to the North Coast, where he had family and friends.

His plan fell through on the sixth day, as he was arrested by a posse and turned over to officials who transported him in shackles to one of their many regional encampments. It would be five-years, give or take a few days, before he would feel the hint of freedom – and by that time, the world had become a very different place.