1974


As another year came to its end and a new one began, I wondered how long we could keep pulling
this off. God forbid one of the neighbors should see us together doing something inappropriate
and decide to tell my parents, I'm sure they would be out for blood. I guess if a child can somehow
manage to hold down a relationship, then what is their problem? If, however, either of them begin
to hurt Harmony, I will have no other choice but to take my Mickey Mantle Louisville slugger and go
to town on them, because at this point, it doesn't matter who. If they have to hurt someone, then I'll
be there at the other end of the fist and broom spitting out blood. That I could forgive them for, but
the penalty for hurting an angel is far more severe than I should attempt to bolster in mere words.
If let's say for "whatever reason" my parents did somehow catch us in the middle of a passionate
tryst, I am sure I could expect those beatings. I would then be forbidden to see the only person I ever
truly loved, while they begin removing things from my room, I enjoy like my turntable, records, etc.
Then finally, they would banish me to that room for months, probably without supper. During which
time they would have the audacity to tell me that they are only doing this because they love me!

 

People like that deserve to be put on fire!!! It is selfish and wrong! This life is not about you anymore,
it's about us! Our happiness and well being! No one and I repeat, "No one" is going to bring that kind
of pain into our lives. Not if I can help it anyway! But the truth is they don't know, and they are good
people. Just the same, they cannot be trusted until I come of age, and no matter how hard they try to
gain my confidence, they ab-so-lute-ly can-not be told of this! No way!!! That would be the only fatal
flaw and believe me brother, it is not going to happen! There is an old saying that dates back to the
time of Adam. You might even hear it said today.


"TRUST NO ONE"


 
As I sit shivering in a warm apartment, I can no longer control my emotions.
It's my fault for resurrecting her, I should have known better. Everything I tried so
dearly to keep buried has come back to haunt me, and I cannot get her image out
of my mind. My chest feels like it is in a vice being slowly squeezed while my hands
tremble so, I can hardly type these words and this is torturing me to no end.

                                                                             Pg 207
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Sometimes in the morning when I awaken, there is an interlude of silence and for that brief
moment, I almost expect her to be lying near me. How something so wonderful and so perfect
could ever come to this goes totally beyond the realm of any form of reason. Then, in that instant
of a heartbeat I realize, someone is taking her place. During those seconds, it begins to dawn
on me. . . She's just not the person I needed so much to be there.

*Then it gets bad*

You start to regress until you find that it's actually worse now than if there was
nobody there at all. As you slowly fall victim to the memories, you find yourself
wading in a pool of tears, till you're nothing but a hand in an ocean going down.



Indeed, we are all born into despair, for the very moment we are slated to take our
first breath, we have already begun to die. When I look at myself in the mirror,
I do not see a person, but rather a conscious entity standing inside a shell trying
to make sense of it all. I want to punch it, but it is not the mirror I am angry with,
it is time. Time has betrayed me in ways you could never understand. Like waiting
for your wife at the airport and finding out that plane landed in 1974.

You missed her. . . You were sleeping.

Now instead of reveling in each day like each day was a precious gift hand picked by God,
you look forward to trying out a casket, while you sit in despair watching your skin turn
into that of a rotting prune. I am not ashamed to admit I am frightened. In fact, I am
terrified. Those wonderful memories have all become like the blade of a bone saw.
Oh my love, how deep they wound. Yet, I would not cast out even one moment we shared
together. Harmony, if you're out there, I can almost feel you by my side, guiding my hand
in the writing of this book. Oh Harmony, I love you more than anyone, I always have.
When it comes time to summon Dark Monday, I will be prepared, because summoning
that nightmare again will be like reliving the worst possible day one can humanly imagine.
Where every second apart from your sweet love becomes a yearning that time cannot relate to.
"But for you my darling I will do this, one  last  time.

What I wouldn't do in this life just to hold you in my arms once more. I would gladly burn
this book if I knew it would bring you back, but what would burning the book do except
have me lose you again, and that is something I am not strong enough to even think of.
"In truth, I just wanted to tell the world about Harmony and wrote a few extra pages.
I got lost in a dream, and I never woke up. Who can say that each life is not its own
separate universe? A place of purgatory for past sins. A world designed only for you
that will die when you die, only to become a resurgent force all over again in a new
body with new pitfalls. Can you tell me otherwise? In the end, will anything really
matter except the rejoining of you and me? I'm sorry baby, but I refuse to be put into
the ground knowing that you will be forgotten. I need the world to love you as I have
loved you. To know you as I have known you. To remember you the way I remember
you, long after I have been discarded. Is that such a sin?

                                                                             Pg 208
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For now it's Wednesday, July 17th, summertime. School is over until the fall, but Harmony
insists I brush up on my studies, and so I do. If I have a problem, she is eager to help me
with it. Overall she makes learning fun. Unlike my parents who say, "no one ever helped us
with our homework" (((and))) "do it yourself or fail." Most of the time, I tried to forget about
them by simply living the best way I knew how. In doing so, I enveloped myself in Harmony,
knowing she would always be there for me. Her door is always open, and I no longer have
that terrible fear of her leaving me for someone else. I am more mature now. If I have a problem,
I tell her about it, which makes it go away. A woman more nurturing than Harmony would not
be human, and every day my love for her grows stronger. My maternal grandparents who lived
down the beach on Boehm street had begun to wonder why I wasn't coming over to the pool
anymore and slowly questions were being raised. Why just this morning, I heard my mother on
the dining room phone. "Oh mom, don't worry. He's all right and he's happier now than ever."
Harmony's dwelling had become my haven, and we were doing everything together. Soon, we'll
be able to flaunt our love at will, for we will have won the game and how great that day is going to
be! I can almost taste it!!! Sweeter than anything known to man and twice as gentle, this is my lover.

But the world was beginning to change in ways my tiny brain
would never be able to comprehend. . . Even after I went mad.

Friday on the morning of August 9th, I awoke to find out that President Nixon had been
forced to resign. The news came as a shock to all of us, with the exception of Harmony,
who could have cared less if he jumped out of a cable car. For me, it was the end of an
era. I was getting older, times were changing. That should have made me feel better, but
it was just the opposite. For a brief moment, it kind of felt as if someone put a blower
to my ear and blew all the information that had been carefully stored in neat little boxes
out onto the living room carpet. I was stunned and disoriented, but would recover.



Before the evening twilight fell upon the trees, Harmony was making me laugh by fooling
around with this drama mask on a stick! She was so out of character in stand-up comedy!
Trying to talk like an old Indian woman while throwing around an accent, that was thicker
than my grandmother's kitchen table! And believe me, that son-of-a-bitch is thick!!!



Soon it was Friday, October 25th. My parents were officially divorced, and I insisted on staying
with Timmy while my mother courted her new flame. In celebration of my 11th birthday today,
Mother would allow me to take off from school. Walking upstairs, I slammed the bathroom door,
before dropping the thick plastic cup to the ceramic tiles, making it obvious I was in there. I then
opened the door very quietly and crept into my parent's room where I dialed Harmony's number.
I told her I was being forced into doing something I did not want to do and begged her fervently
to come over and help me get out of it somehow. Because of the urgency in my voice, Harmony
was outside ringing the doorbell almost faster than I could get back into the bathroom again!
As mom opened the outside door Harmony rushed in. I flushed the toilet and began to walk down
the stairs when I heard Harmony crying and thought to myself, oh my God, what happened? I froze
at the top of the stairs and couldn't move until Harmony left. I then walked down the stairs into
the living room where my mother was seated, and she said I could stay. I was ecstatic!

Until my mother told me what it was that Harmony said.

                                                                             Pg 209
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"Charlie, I think you need to sit down." The sadness in my mother's voice made my stomach
sick and my head dizzy. "I don't know how to say this to you honey, (holding my hands) but
your friend is dying." I didn't even need a minute for it to sink in, it was already there. I jumped
up hysterical shouting, "don't say that! How could you say that?" My mother embraced me
and I wept like a baby in her arms. Two hours later at ten O'clock, we waved goodbye to
them as they left that morning in my mother's brand new 1974 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
As the proud bright orange car made its way up the street, confetti came raining down
upon us in the form of a passing shower.



Like a ticker tape parade held in my honor! I didn't care if they came back this Sunday, next week
or the following year. I would be alone with Harmony, and that's all that really mattered.

Upon entering the house, I confronted Harmony about what she had said to my mother.
"Why would you say such a thing like that to her?""You wanted to get out of going didn't
you?" "Yes, but not like that!""Like how then? How else was I going to do it? You tell me
how!!!""I don't know how!!! I only know what they know; Timmy is dying!!! That's all they
know and if he dies, we die, cause then I can't stay here anymore!" I was totally hysterical and
couldn't catch my breath. "If you don't think for us, we're doomed, cause I can't do it!"
She held me in her arms and told me not to cry. "I did a real stupid thing, and I am so sorry.
Maybe with chemotherapy we could keep him around until you're seventeen. After that, no
one will have any use for him anymore so he dies." "You mean we just stop talking about
him?" "I mean, I go to my country for ten days to bury my brother." "I wish I was as
smart as you." "You are or I wouldn't be with you."

At approximately two O'clock Harmony walks into the kitchen and swings around
seductively, her face half covered by her long wavy hair. "Today is the day," she
announces before turning herself around and walking the other way. I have to admit,
these past couple of weeks I've been noticing a marked change in her behavior. A subtle
nuance in her attitude. It's just some peculiar flaw that suddenly presented itself in her
personality. Simple things that used to make her laugh, now only make her smile, and
when she smiles, she is not smiling with me, but for me. Like she has to because she
doesn't want to hurt my feelings. Lately every time she smiles, I get the distinct impression
she does not want to smile at all, but rather, absorb herself in things that do not involve me.
But still, the way she looks into my eyes is more loving. I don't understand it.

                                                                             Pg 210
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At around three O'clock Harmony tells me she is ready to perform a sacred ceremony.
There was incense burning, soothing music playing and six strange looking mushrooms
in a dish. "Prepare yourself my love, for we are about to embark on a transcendent journey
through time and space. We will always be together in both body and spirit," she said to me
in a low voice. "Are you sure you want to go through with this? You have to be absolutely
certain." "Yes," I said in an adult voice, while trying to command somewhat of an authority.
"I am going out on a limb here. If something should go wrong..." "Nothing will go wrong,
because I have you to save me." She smiled in that sad new way and proceeded to light three
medium sized round candles. One peach, her favorite color. One green, my favorite color
and one brown. *Earth color - Stability*

Harmony then told me to eat three of the six mushrooms, chewing
them as best as possible until there was nothing left. This we did
together. "In but a brief moment my little prince, I shall walk with
you in the lair of the shadow dwellers, for I have found it is time."
"What made you change your mind?" "My undying love for you."

Within an hour, I began to see my own voice emanating in the rarest of beautiful of colors,
while only a stairstep away stood the most exquisite, most enchanting angel this world would
ever know. The love I felt for her had far surpassed that of infatuation and was now bordering
on a point of worship. All that which is beautiful and all that which is pure seemed to radiate
around her, turning everything into a pool of love. Everything was now beginning to live!
The refrigerator was suddenly happy. The cabinet was boasting its doors and trying earnestly
to make me smile. Grass had started to grow like wildfire in the living room, and the pied
pipers down in the blue cavern were leading the band!



In my mind, I was no longer a little boy, but a man!

As I stood next to Harmony by the kitchen counter, I realized my potential in life was limitless.
I could be anything I choose to be, and am I really her prince? Toss a coin into the air. If it should
stop in mid-flight, then you will know precisely how I felt for the duration of that whole entire night!

Standing in the threshold of time, I would find that my lover had made me immortal. I could do
anything I wanted to do and no harm would come to me. I asked Harmony if this was true, and
she told me that what I was experiencing was a lot like that of a dream. "Suppose you know
you're in a dream, and you wish to wake up. Do you throw yourself in front of a moving automobile?
I should say not, what if you're sleepwalking? That would be cause and effect for your downfall!
The same holds true when you walk in the land of the Shadow Dwellers. You now have to be more
aware of things than you would normally have to be aware of in waking life, so no my little prince,
we have to very careful here."



                                                                             Pg 211
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I wasn't worried about the material world coming alive and hurting me, because I felt very relaxed
and comfortable in my new domain. Everything around me was acting like it was my friend, and
accepting me for who I was. Kind of like the way Harmony had been treating me all these years.
Meaning, I did not have to put on airs for even myself, let alone Harmony or my new found friends!

I must admit it felt really wild!

I knew these material objects had the power to destroy me if they so desired, but instead, it was
almost as though they were somehow trying to uplift my spirits by expressing themselves to me.
Not in an overtly childish manner like Janine at the dentist's office who would make googly faces
with rolling eyes as she spoke, as if every child who entered the office was mentally deficient, and
would find themselves giggling at her. No, it was nothing like that. It was more like a favorite toy
that has suddenly come alive and begins looking for ways of expressing itself to you! That is the
only way I can explain it, and of course I could only sense this, however.

It felt like I had suddenly been thrown into wonderland
and would soon meet Alice and the mad hatter! Overall,
there wasn't an ounce of anything bad in all the land!!!

I would say, I was surrounded by a feeling of peace and well being. When I closed my eyes, I told
God how thankful I was for blessing me with someone so sweet and kind. Most women that lovely
would never have even given me a second look, but Harmony wasn't most women.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((No, Harmony was special)))))))))))))))))))))))))))

As I harkened to a sound beneath my feet, the color of the kitchen began to offset my mind. Since it
was a light pink, I kept thinking I was inside a dollhouse! How crazy is that? Lightning crackled in the
darkening sky as the rain came down like a billion marbles, hammering the roof. Hey wait, if I'm in a
dollhouse, doesn't that make me about as big as a toy soldier, and if I'm as big as a toy soldier, doesn't
that mean that I'm really very small? Small enough to fall victim to a passing spider? When I told
Harmony of this, she said to concentrate on her voice and touch, and that is what will define me.
Soon, I was free again to explore the labyrinth of time, and an unbalanced fictitious world that
had begun to germinate.

To interpret and understand the mystical, is to pop out on the other side of a rabbit-hole.



To go wandering about while your mind calculates the degree of time and effort spent on
a single emotion. Nothing remains, they must be created and built from atoms layered by
inconsequential matter harvested by machines. Machines that have the ability to transport
a human being through time and space. From the primitive to the very advanced stages
of life. It is a dangerous journey for such an unadvanced society, but that is the game our
children play, and now we were playing it too. Through all this, I could somehow still
distinguish between right and wrong.

                                                                             Pg 212
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❊ I then began to think of my dentist appointment last week. Every time I found myself in
that waiting room with my dad, Janine, the receptionist would ask me if I was ready to go
to the moon. Yes, I would say excitedly, but always regret it once the gas was turned on.



I knew what was coming and nothing could be more horrible, I thought, than sitting in that
chair while the nitrous oxide was being administered. That awful smell of burning tires
pouring slowly into my nostrils, numbing my sensory perception. The only thing I could
ever think of was pulling it from my face! Strange muzak funneling into my brain would
slowly assemble the pattern to a disturbing and dreadful hallucination.

After shuffling about the room and moving the instruments of torture around in a
straightforward fashion, he would pause to concern himself in my affairs. With a
dead tongue from the Novocaine, and what felt like an agglomeration of fossilized
stones in my mouth, I was able to say, "I feel fine." He would then leave me to
the quiet of my discontent. Disconnected and drifting apart from the world.

Help me!

When he left that tiny cubicle of a room, the lighted ceiling
panels multiplied. The chair then raised itself up into the
grandiose shadow of this towering consternation until my
face was a bar of light. It was on the third floor that I was
elevated through them and stopped.

I later surmised this was when he brought the lamp to my face and
had already begun working on my teeth, long after I absconded.

There are presently no other life forms in this bizarre solar system for all I have
encountered consists of foreign matter, which has been displaced and dispersed
all around me, so I am only able to see and hear bits and pieces of what once was.



Soon, these odd memories will be all I am comprised of. Have I been deposited in
Purgatory to be sorted through like old clothing? My mind is numb and airy and my
body is somewhere down in the basement of thought. Have I always been here?
What kind of life form am I and where is Harmony? Even more perplexing, where
is my dad? Why would he leave me in nothingness? God, this is so strange!

There was a loud jamming sound and a dull clunk. My vehicle of transport had gone too
high for it had gotten stuck. On a desolate avenue where people never wander, I found
myself alone. Like a fun house ride through a haunted house that leaves you stranded
in the middle of darkness. Locked inside a metal cage, no one gets out of that place!
Suddenly, my neck was turned and I began sinking. "Wow," I said to myself, "if this is
the end of the ride, then I am knee deep in the shit because there is no way on earth,
I can find my way home from here! I don't even know what planet my legs are on!!!
I have to get them back so I can leave!"

                                                                             Pg 213
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Sensing this the galaxy chair must have known we were in a fixed position and soon
began to readjust its hydraulics. Then this lost barber chair sped me down a long
corridor which was now longer than a hospital wing, until my toes battered the heavy
plastic doors. Judging by how fast I was going and the amount of pressure exerted
from those swinging doors, I would have to say they were packed with sand! In a very
eerie room, the chair runs out of propellant, where some kind of activity is taking place.

I fear I am in the clutches of monsters. . .



The voices I am beginning to hear do not appear to be threatening, and that is a good sign.
They seem to be studying me with the utmost precision and if I am correct are sewing
something in the stempole. I can feel the protrusion of a needle and thread being twisted
and pulled in and out of my cheek and am frightened. Why am I here? Every time I dream,
I am here. Oh my God, this must be purgatory because I have always been here! I only
thought I left!!! As Mocedades graces the airwaves with Eres tú, I think to myself, what a
wonderful life I once knew.  Now I don't give a damn about anything! I open my eyes to
find they are unmistakably human and that is a better sign, but their language is garbled
and warped unlike mine, but they are learning!!!

Without warning this mad Asian, demon-dentist shocked me by dropping a metal object
of deafening proportion on the iron table! From there he would repeat the same phrase
and follow the same bodily movements again and again and again! While I watched him,
in never end, I would say my brain repeated the function about thirty times to fade out.
As I watch my demon-dentist perform in this strange show, someone is building towns
in my mouth.

Although he was very smiley and quite happy during the day, under the artificial light,
he was tricky, and I had to be careful. In that crepuscular world, you were completely
at his mercy. With X-ray vision and a tool that whizzed by spitting air and water at me,
I would slide deep down into the depths of a murky illusion, and hide from an occasional
piece of flying gum. Often, it would fly out of the trench and into the world of real time.
Where things dressed in black that have no faces slither down hallways, or the
Gaurntruffle's that gather about the room! How they always seemed to move right
before the dentist can catch them in real-time remains a mystery!

I heard someone caught one last year while huffing ether!
He talks to it all the time now.

Sometimes my dentist would crank open my wooden mouth, carving and snipping.
Then sicken me by dropping flesh into my lap! That is the pure helplessness of life.
Where the downtrodden sorrows fester in splendid isolation. That preposterous darkness.
That thick soppy gloom is a lifeline to the floating head, which is now all that is left of me.



As my hands approached a near rigor mortis state, I found them to be welded to my own
chest; my own heart. I-need-to go-now! I-can't open-my-hands!!! Get me out of here,
I screamed to no one! No one can survive in that world without guidance, and only a fool
should wish to dabble in there. That blackened void reeks of death. ❊

                                                                             Pg 214
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But being here with Harmony, I was safe for she had become my protector. I wouldn't become lost
in another world like at the dentist, and besides, how much worse could these mushrooms really be?

The goddess standing before me who appeared to be dressed in fine webbings was now an extension
of my own self. The most beautiful part of living was life with her! I cleaved unto harmony as a baby
would cleave unto its own mother, and she guided me ever so gracefully through the experience.
She would explain to me everything I was feeling in the order of which they were being received.

As she rose up from the kitchen chair and advanced down the hallway,
I followed behind her like a servant following his master.



I soon started to feel like an animal of the forest reacting on instinct, while following the scent of his
soon to be mate. As she opened the bathroom door and proceeded to tinkle, she asked me how I was
feeling. "Fine," I said to her as the incandescent glow of candles caused the air to flicker madly!
"You never looked more beautiful than you do right now. Will you marry me," I asked? She laughed
and appeared star struck."Ask me that question in six years, and I'll say yes!" Her eyes effulgently
radiated a warmth of inner peace that caused the mask I was wearing to smile. She then got up and
gave me a loving embrace.

"It's so amazing," I said, "how we look with new eyes."

Harmony smiled! "Would you like to go upstairs with me?" "Yes," I said without hesitation,
feeling like a book was being written as we were living it! As we left the stillness of the bathroom
and proceeded through the living room, it felt like we were walking in clouds. Did the whole
house just float away into the sky or are we now in a ninety story tree house? Whatever it was,
it was truly wonderful!



At that very moment in time, I began to feel like the man who lived in an apartment on the ninety
ninth floor of his block. He sat at home looking out the window imagining the world had stopped.
When in flew a guy who was dressed up like a Union Jack. He said, he had a problem, so he gave
him his detergent back. You know the guy I'm referring to. In my mind, I stood at the top of that
beautiful staircase and began screaming at a world that appeared to be sleeping. . .



                                              "Hey-hey! You-you! Get off-my cloud!!!"

Entering my lover's bedroom, I paused as I so often do to look around. Today, the room is alive
with energy and everything is so sharp and clear! Is it my eyes that have suddenly changed to
convert to their world, or is my mind processing my thoughts like it does in the land of dreams?

Strange mushrooms, they are neither vegetable nor mineral, yet they cause the world to change.
There is no time for me to dwell on edible fungi now! One day perhaps, I will find out just what
kind of magic lies inside them!

Casually, I advance toward the canopy bed to find Harmony in a seductive pose. To me, she
appeared to be inspecting herself for flaws. Believe me when I tell you there were none! I crept
up to her from behind and wrapped my arms around her waist. From there I start to kiss her arm,
but got distracted. There is too much happening for me to concentrate solely on her! As I slowly
begin to undress my lover, I let the articles of clothing fall to the floor, where the most interesting
things were beginning to happen! The rug was now overrun with strange looking idiosyncratic
goblins who appeared to be dancing in a red forest while singing and bobbling their heads merrily.
For the first time, my thoughts were diverted from Harmony. I left her standing partially dressed
by the side of the bed while I ran my fingers through the red hairs of this shaggy fabric.



"They're all over the place," I said, in that very impressionable state, while getting down on my hands
and knees to observe them. Upon hearing this, she sat on the bed and began massaging my shoulders.
She didn't exhibit signs of being disappointed in the least and was soon down on her hands and
knees as well. Harmony pointed to some while I pointed at others!

                                                                             Pg 215
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PG 207) Guten Tag by Siegfried Zademack

PG 207) The Eye by Matthew Bradbury

PG 208) Not simply beauty by Gyuri Lohmuller

PG 209) The New York Daily News - Nixon Resigns

PG 209) *A drama icon*

PG 210) Walking in the rain by Peter Torrieri

PG 211) Moving on by Matt Dangler

PG 211) Pocket jungle-room by Jacek Yerka

PG 212) Schermata by Matt Dangler

PG 213) Deimos by Don Dixon

PG 213) On the edge of space by Jacek Yerka

PG 214) Invoking the seed by Jason Limon

PG 214) Micronaut by Robert Steven Connett

PG 215) Angels of our nature by Heidi Taillefer

PG 215) Your last walk by Xetobyte

PG 215) Cloudbreaker by Jacek Yerka

PG 215) Obsidian Champion II by Steve Argyle