I can remember when it was easier to get laid during the AIDS crisis than it is to talk to anyone during this COVID-19 epidemic.

He had slipped out with the intent to be gone through nightfall. He knew all the roving patrol schedules and found that he could avoid their detection in the early hours of the morning and evening.

He crawled and slid his way across the open fields, between the many compounds, until he slipped into the treeline and up the shallow hill and into the open desert. Once there, he’d begin his hunt to put extra food on their supper table during this ‘saison de quarantaine.’

In the depths of winter on that Friday morning, he found himself tracking game along an unfamiliar, but heavily used animal trail. He nocked up an arrow and sat down to wait.

Down the path, he heard the sounds of movement; the cracking of twigs, bushes and such. Assuming it was perhaps a wild boar, he drew the arrow back and held, waiting to see his target.

Something flitted between the openings in the darker underbrush. Then, like the archer he knew himself to be, he loosed his deadly arrow.

He heard the thing strike its target with a knowing thump. This was followed quickly by a scream of pain from a beast whose cry he did not recognize.

Slowly, he moved to where the animal should have fallen, another arrow already nocked up and ready, but there was nothing to be found. Then a low angry rumble began behind him, followed by the slow blink of a pair of yellow eyes glowing from inside the thick brush.

His skill, he knew, may not be enough to save him and that supper might be late, if supper came at all.

Dis bez Toms puppers…I’s rehomin’ my hooman, free to goods famelly, has paperz, likes long walkz, telbishon, sleepz, butt no liks chasen sqirls, barksen at pos-peples or pupperz takn hoomans for walkz.

The sea was at low tide and I could see the jut of rocks a quarter mile out, sticking up from the surface. It was these that I decided would make a good point to swim towards as I entered the chilled Pacific waves.

Invigorated, I climbed from the water and found that my perch was much larger than I could have seen from my vantage point on the sand. Amid the clefts and jags of this perch sat a woman, or what I believed to be a woman.

She turned to look at me and I immediately knew this was no woman in the literal sense of human. No, she was a mermaid, bare breasted, scaled and finned from the hips down.

I gasped in shear fright as she smiled a shark-toothed grin towards me.

“Poor darling,” she said in voice that sounded quite beautiful and very calming, “The tide comes in and you’ll soon drown or you may try to swim back and I’ll drown you. Either way, you become my day’s meal.”

Slightly to the south of me, I saw a small boat. I waved my arms and screamed with great panic for help.

As I did this, the thing heaved its body towards me with tremendous speed, knocking me down. It held in it’s hand a bone knife that it stabbed into my left shoulder twice and with quick succession.

Waking as the two fishermen lifted me into their boat, I struggled with them, thinking they were my eldritch attacker. Once they hauled me aboard, they quickly motored for land.

One of them told me how they had seen the seal lion attacking me. They’d seen how it had knocked me down and how I acquired the deep puncture wounds to my upper torso and how fortunate I was that they happened along.

I objected strenuously to this recreated version, before fading into unconsciousness once again.

Once ashore they said I was suffering from a fever brought on blood loss and fright attack. And they attributed my loose-tongued hallucination to these, meanwhile confirming it had been a large seal lion that had battered my stricken body.

But I know better, as later that same day, a woman and her dog were ‘swept from the nearby jetty by a rogue wave,’ while the surrounding ocean remained calm.

If my dogs could talk, they’d say, “And now you understand our boredom, it’s why we chew shit up, Tom!”

“The Moon is in Cancer,”
The horoscope read.
No wonder it looks
Sickly and pale
Each full night
After it has risen.

https://soundcloud.com/sierra-tom-darby/in-20200401

He knew that it had to be a spell. His mother could not be here and Brady shook his head hard to make the image shift into its real self.

The thing then, whatever it was, shot straight into the morning sky and disappeared from sight.

Suddenly others like it came running from over the rise in front of his property. He had no sooner drawn his Colt than the first arrived, springing at Brady, who blasted it with a single shot.

The battle lasted long enough for Brady to empty his gun and resort to his long knife. Brady’s horse was not so lucky.

The beast had instinctively raced to his human’s side, but had been gutted for it’s trouble. The animals sank to the ground after the fight and settled, as Brady knelt beside it.

There was only one way to ease the animal’s pain. The revolver’s blast reverberated through the stillness of the morning.

On a nearby fence post sat a lone raven, looking over the horrendous scene. The bird, Brady could tell, had but a single-eye, the other a darkened hollow and covered in scar tissue.

The connection was instantaneous as the raven and Brady became a single force.

The unlikely pair picked up the creatures’ trail late that evening and tracked them along a narrow road, which eventually split in three, the greater number of tracks moving to the left.  This is the path Brady took as well.

Soon enough, he heard the rise and fall of singing. He also recognized where the ungodly prints had lead him.

The hovel. The same place where he’d found the dozens of bodies, slain and butchered; the same place he first heard the singing and from where he’d back away knowing he was ill prepared for a battle.

The bird flew above the dwelling, as Brady entered, his Colt blazing and long knife flashing. Those that found themselves outside of the half-buried hut, ran into the raven’s talons and beak.

As the raven rested on a nearby branch, Brady collected, then stacked nineteen heads in the doorway, leaving the message clear: they were going to kill them all.

It was difficult to tell if I was seeing things or if what I was seeing was real. He was a stalk of a man, thin in every respect of the word, and tall.

Around his middle was a large circular frame, draped in what appeared to be parachute silk. The frame was strapped to his meatless body with leather harnesses meant to keep the thing, whatever it was, from moving around.

After he finished buckling the harness in place, be proceeded across the parking lot. As he did, the Nevada winds, second only to Wyoming, picked up and began dragging him backwards, until he came off the ground.

I dialed 9-1-1 as he continued to scream and kick, flying away from the parking lot and over a nearby grocery store.

“Do you need fire, police or ambulance?”

“Ambulance, maybe fire,” I answered.

“Where is your emergency?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered, “He flew over a building and out of my line of sight.”

“Can you repeat that, please?”

As I did this, the operator responded, “Oh…never mind, we’re getting more calls about this, and here I thought you were pulling my leg.”

We both laughed as she disconnected our call.

until today,
my summer coat
without buttons,
our burn barrel fires
and a few hand-outs
have been enough
to survive this
pandemic.

then
an essential government
garbage truck
dumped,
crushed,
hauled
away the non-essential
man
like so much refuse,
that now,
even little red riding hood
admits life is darkest
from inside the wolf.

we’ve been inoculated,
but never cured.

With yet another 30-days mandated, government is monitoring us to see if we’re observing social distancing. Those not following the rules, could b…