Possum Desperation

Ron Koppelberger

About 3016 Words

Possum Desperation

Trace Merchant had driven the same eighty mile track for the last three years, from Hammock Orange to Orlando and back. The route wasn’t simple, nevertheless Trace found it to be the most expedient way to point B. He had to travel the back road passage between blossom preserve and East Orlando, fifty of the eighty miles through tangles of ancient oak, mossy swamp lands full of alligators and snakes; through the mystery of ancient drama, through vistas uninhabited and he had chanced to wonder what would happen if he broke down somewhere in the midst of the morass? It was a passing thought, not really meriting further consideration, besides this was the shortest route between the Hammock and Orlando.
The Impala was black with fat silver trim and she ran like a top. Trace was nearly twenty miles into the lush jungle terrain, nearly half way there he thought as the speedometer pushed eighty around one of the meandering curves.
The possum scraped at the loose soil with it’s front paws, looking for beetles and grubs, she was hungry. She lifted her head for a second at the sound of the approaching car; in that moment she decided to cross the concrete path.
The car sped closer and the possum scrabbled into the road near the yellow painted divider. She watched as the car, a huge black silhouette roared around a blind curve. She remained still in fear, it won’t see me she thought crouching down in the center of the road.
For Trace the moment hung suspended in a flash. He saw the crouching possum and jerked the wheel hard to the left. The car leaned on two wheels and flipped over into the rushing shadow of palm scrub and cattail filled ditch. The car careened off the soft mossy embankment and into a pine tree; there it came to rest on it’s side wheels turning and motor revving for purchase.
Trace groaned and reached for the key, turning it he cut the engine. For a moment of hypnotic divorce, divorce from the reality of the moment, in a breath of seconds he saw himself lying against the drivers side door. There was a deep gash on his right hand, the patter of dripping blood filled the silence. He tried to move and a sharp grinding pain blossomed in his left leg. Was it broken? He wasn’t sure but it hurt like hell.
Trace inhaled deeply and unbuckled the seatbelt. At least he had worn the belt, it had probably saved him from flying through the windshield. He had to work at it and the pain in his leg was nearly overwhelming, but he managed to move into a sitting position. Looking upward at the passenger door he realized he’d have to climb through the window. The glass was shattered and it lay in piles around his bottom.
The sky went from a shadowy azure and piercing yellow to a burnt orange twilight as the hours passed silently. A flock of seagulls flew east toward the distant ocean and Trace saw them through the shattered passenger glass; they were flying in a triangle heading toward warm seas and inland perch.
He maneuvered himself into a crouch, his leg hurt and he determined it wasn’t broken but sprained, nevertheless the pain was a terrific pulsing heartbeat in his hip and knee. Reaching upward he pulled himself into a standing position. His head poked through the passenger window. Orange twilight reflected in his tired eyes and the gentle whisper of a warm wind ruffled the bloody strands of hair against his forehead.
Trace pressed his good leg against the side of the drivers seat and began climbing through the window. After struggling for a few moments he found himself sitting atop the door, feet dangling down into the smashed Impala.
Trace sat there looking at the curve in the road, there were skid marks and a dirty slash in the embankment. He was lucky, no major injuries or at least he didn’t think so. He tapped out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. The cool mentholated burn of the smoke filled his lungs as he leaned back and blew a cloud of smoke into the bloody twilight above.
The bleeding on his right hand had stopped, drying into a thick maroon scab. He wouldn’t bleed to death anyway. Swinging his injured leg over the side of the car he prepared to jump down to the mossy embankment. He had his good leg pointed down as he dropped down to the weedy ditch. A sharp stinging jolt traveled through his leg as he hobbled to the side of the road.

*******

The shadows were a reflection of it’s eyes, it’s demeanor of ancient embrace, it’s silhouette in awe of the hammock, it’s eternal end and it’s place of secret, in wrath by degrees of hunt. Up until now it had been sated with small deer, and last week a coyote, separated from it’s companion travelers. It had been tough, stringy and unsatisfying. This was the promise, it’s time of imprisonment would come to an end. The promise, it’s destiny to purvey the wants of a greater ascension, he would have the man, for his promise for the future of his need, in blood, in triumph in the dark caress that would bring the others from the ethereal prison that bound them to the dreadful primitive substance of exile and isolation; the man would be his and the promise would come on the heals of dark stars and bleeding passions of flame. It waited and watched as the man stepped into the road. The two lane pass stretched into the distant swamp. Trace looked both ways’ left then right. He realized the odds of another car courting the back ally trail was unlikely. There were patches of grass and cracked unused pavement for another thirty or so miles. He would head south. Remembering the route he knew there was a service station near the end of the secondary passage. Thirty miles on a bad leg he thought. He began limping toward the frayed indigo line of darkness opposite the bloated orange sun.

*******

The possum sat still, silent watching the man, smelling blood, his blood and something else, something dark waiting for the man or maybe the small scrabbling purchase it held on life. It was old and grown black with the despair of a hundred monsters; it had an eye for the hunt. The possum crept along the shaded wood following the man south. The possum would leave the security of it’s home, a hollow stump in the forest edge for the pilgrimage south. The possum followed the man and the glimmer of nightmares in desire, in wont of unbidden passion, of dreams in unleashed fury and freedom. A freedom of dark secret ambition in the abodes of man, in stealth and eternal hunt, it would peruse; it knew the others would come. The shadows and bent angles of egress birthing freedom from the captive alliance of the swamp. All in all the beast thought about it’s pain and how to slake it’s thirst with the blood of the man.

*******

Trace watched the sky go from a sapphire glow to pinpoints of starlight and a crescent moon giving only a small sliver of pale light. He was wearing whit tennis shoes and he quietly thanked god for Fridays; Friday was casual dress day at the office. He was wearing a gray t-shirt, blue jeans and the white tennis shoes. On any other day he would have been wearing patent leather loafers, black thin soled bad for walking long distances, and a three piece suit.
He worked at mortgage Estates Inc., he was an estate distributor and an agent for the dearly departed. The long track to work had been worth it, his first year he had grossed Three hundred and fifty thousand and now he was earning over a million a year. The god’s had been very good to Trace Merchant.
Trace thought about the Dryer account as he limped forward. He had fudged the receipts, Eleanor Dryer had left Four million in bearer bonds behind. Trace had access to the safety deposit box they were carefully stored in. A key, a secret key to greener vistas; he had taken the bonds never mentioning them to his partners or Eleanor’s family. Four Mill free and clear. He wasn’t really greedy nevertheless he had taken advantage of the opportunity. He knew he had worked the option to the max, the grand plot and the key to a diamond bonus.
His eyes wandered to the tall pines on either side of the road, whispers of guilt, He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Hard crusted blood scratched his dry lips.
Trace hobbled along in the darkness for an hour or so. The enchanting trail marked by moss laden trees and scrabbling sounds that emanated by the woods set him on edge a cautious trepidation in a strange dream. He looked into the shadows ahead and the narrow line of concrete stretched forward to an eternity of crickets and croaking toads. He worried about snakes, alligators from the swampy prayers of ethereal smoke and hanging hammocks. Pausing, he moved to the side of the road, he would need a crutch to walk with, something to balance his aching hip and sprained knee. The ditch line was half full of swampy green water and cattails in bloom.
He moved to the edge of the water line and tried to jump to the opposite bank. He’d find a tree branch to support his aching sprain. His good leg propelled him about half way across the ditch as he landed knee deep in water and weed. Pin wheeling he fell backward to the edge of the ditch. His eyes squinted reflexively at the cool rush of water that soaked his legs and back. “Dammit!” he gasped. He pulled himself across the channel and into the grassy overgrowth. Laying there, soaked warmth from his body gluing his shirt to his back, he listened to the cascade of chirping insects and something a heavy crashing sound.
He thought of the black bears that were native to the area, huge paws and sharp crushing teeth. He was silent, controlling his exhalations as he lay in the secret of a drama told in sashes of evening tide dreams, maybe it’s a nightmare he thought as he pictured the bear and it’s hungry maw, the wild passage and the nighttime mists were surreal almost like a cloak of otherworldly illusion, maybe a dream he thought as well.

*******

He watched from a distance in the pine and gnarled oaken root. The man was moving slow, it would have plenty of time to take him, to make his substance his own in chance and fated fathers of darkness, darkness from distant vistas in the sky and the endless cycle of travelers in wont. It would wait for the right moment, the second the stars told their song of shadow and embracing desire for freedoms unbound, by the fetters of ancient prisons and the shaped lines of rebuke. It would wait.

*******

The possum crouched still near the man away from the hunter, away from the odor of decay and swamp gas silhouettes. She was in rare wonder of his journey, seeking the destiny of possums and man in instinct. She dug into the soft soil finding a mole cricket, she swallowed it in one gulp satisfying her hunger.

*******

Trace looked at the wan paper machet sliver of light the moon gave. He lay there damp, chilled in a humid brackish adornment. Gathering his will he climbed the weedy embankment to the line of trees. After searching for a few moments he found a branch. “Perfect.” he said aloud. The branch would act as a crutch.
Trace followed the tree line opposite the ditch until he came to a yielding stretch, a pine tree declared the promise of the opposite bank as it weighed cradles of fallen leaves, pine needles in thick morass against the small stream. Trace used the fallen pine and it’s sprawl to cross the murky ditch.
Calm, casually compliant he sat down on the warm pavement of the two lane passage. He wondered, overtures of greed he thought in quiet devotions of conscious guilt. “What the hell is it to you? It’s only four friggen million.” he said to the rolling clouds overhead, to the darker enticement of night skies and wild swamp. Prickling heat coursed through his sprained leg as he changed position on the concrete. Reflex, it had been reflex and utility; he had proclaimed the shores of bearer bond worship at alters green, four million green, and here he sat soggy, wounded and crowned king shit by the way of a friggen possum, a shade of punishment made for a wayward bastard.
Trace rubbed his eyes and listened to the crashing sound moving closer from within the forest, closer to the edge of the ditch. It sounded heavy, maybe hungry, hunting for food, maybe an alligator or a bear, A panther on the yeowl.

*******

It moved slowly through the Lilly pads and brackish muck, belonging to the cognate flow of shadow and dark substance, closer to the man. It paused as it listened to the mans breath, warm distantly beseeching the call of towers in stone, the rustle of human existence. It moved closer, arguing force purpose and bond, the bond of pursuer and prey, for the will of the silhouettes waiting by patient shores, by the sufferance of prisons in rhythm with the ebony night horizons of elder pass, of ancient captive waiting; it moved closer in anticipation of a new way, the way of men, bent unto the wont it was destined to fulfill.
It watched, closer now, near the edge of the ditch, hidden in secret by the fronds and cattail evanescence of its terrain, holding its exhalations it’s green moss laden back rippling in power, the power of ageless embrace. It opened its mouth prefacing it’s need for the mans blood; lichens and black soil fell from its awakening maw closer, closer to the second it would find liberation from the realms of damp earth to stony trespass along the child of humanity and its perseverance.
The man shimmered in auras of unseen remedy, first red then pale blue. Its eyes perceived those moments and the thirst it felt was staggering. It hummed in a low growl and the man moved to a standing position, seeing him, in fear, in horror of its presence, its terrible visage.

*******

Trace heard the crashing in the palm metto scrub and cattails move closer. Thoughts of wild wolves, bears and panthers on the hunt filled his mind and tempered his nerves to the point of fear. He turned, catching a glimpse of something in the shadow, huge, dark and growling in hungry instinct. Trace stood ready to run, bad leg to hell he thought. He watched the cattails separate and listened to the heavy rhythm of giant unbidden footfalls, animal, wicked smashing closer across the bank into view. The sliver of moon glow shone in vivid appeal to the terror of a thousand demons, a backwoods visage of hell lured by the smell of freedom and blood, nightmares wrought to heights of fiendish revolt, monsters by nameless horrible beyond, careening insanity and the core of secret existence.
The creature exuded the cloying odor of swamp decay, moss moldy bread and molasses sweetness. It stood nearly two feet taller than traces six feet, and it was in a crouch hunched forward as it moved toward him yellow eyed and rippling in damp soils of ancient mystery. It screamed and the sound disturbed the sleeping thrush as they sang and flew upward in unison, sensing the beast and its desire.
Trace watched as sharp edged talons, spears of deadly grasp…..long he thought they looked like yellow ivory knives on it muscled hands. Its teeth ground together in a loud sandpapery dance back and forth, they were dirty moss covered in need in yearning wont for him.
Trace held his crutch like a spear in front warding off the dark countenance of the aged aberration. In a moment of insane revelation he saw the stack of bearer bonds in bloom, blowing in the wind, crisp and brittle like fallen leaves, an autumn death and the beast devouring him, his blood spraying across the stack of bearer bonds.

*******

The possum moved in an uncomplicated arc behind and around the beast, dashing to the front, near its enormous mud laden feet. Traces leg gave in that moment and a symphony of coincidence occurred. The beast stumbled a second later, tripping over the scrambling possum. Trace held his crutch like a sword as he lay on the warm gritty concrete. The creature tottered for an instant screaming and flailing clumsily then fell forward onto Trace, impaled by the crutch. Its shadow covered Trace in an assembly of moss and swamp silt. Trace expelled a mouthful of dirt and clawed at the moldering pile of moss that covered him in heaps and soggy piles. In an infantile effort he rolled out of the damp pile of decaying leaves, pine needles, moss and swamp mud.
Gathering his will he overcame the storm, the tempest swollen by the reverie and worship of demons and legends in darkness. Once again he saw the lie, the sin in his tempered world of finance and quick cash. He discovered his spirit in that moment of contemplation. “Monsters and men.” he whispered as he hobbled away from the remains of the demon and the approach of sin. He realized he didn’t really need the cash, the experience heeded the birth of innocence, the basic awakening of what was possible in a world wrought with the weight of blind horizons and beggars in play.

The Gaurds Vision

 

Portrait (I thought I saw a Vampire)

Lady Hawk

Short Fiction

Ron Koppelberger

The Dark Wolf

The distance between yesterday and today was a decade of sacred hours and anesthetic. The anesthetic was a satisfaction that the urges were encased by cement and iron and the hours spent in quiet contemplation of the illness, the malady, the bother of need and sanguine aching force.
Astor Scow sat solid in his tethered moment of captivity. He was enveloped by the bond of prison existence. He drank in the thoughtfulness of half-starved desires. Nevertheless, he yielded to the asylum of metal bars, the dissension from the row, the hungry certain caress of time passed. He sighed, the blood fresh in his mind, the carnage, the cringing seizure of a later vagabond occurrence; in violence and equally measured themes of sin he had killed. Asphalt and barbed wire ran the length of the yard. The croaking roar of a siren descrying its irritation in songs of freedom to Astor.
He had chewed the fat with divisions of death, sated slaked in blood and rage. He had killed, for need and desires of testimony to the wont that coursed through his arteries. He had killed for mad passions of power and efficient evolutions of unbroken transfer, the transfer of fountains and the spirit of necessity. He had killed in guise of eternal secret and picket fence fantasy, in flourishes of love and ever alert reverence, in reverence of the drive toward expediency, torn, engaged, unwearied by the push of wont. The distracted wholes of feeding wolves and nihilistic men he thought in a certain contemplation. He had killed the length and breadth of homeward bound berths in wolf rule and in faithful prayer.
The siren continued and the cell door slid open with a clanging of gears and steal sliders. Tentatively, Astor explored the exterior of the cell. The resonant whoop of prison clamber filled the halls and maze of cells. Astor, undisturbed and full of purpose, moved through the open gate near the end of the cell block. Fundamental transformations began to overwhelm his senses as he traveled through another gate, closer to the outside world of freedom and chance, the chance of a lifetime.
Darkness filled the exit near the visitors booth . No guards and a myriad of screaming inmates. Astor moved through the exit at a lope then a trotting caution then a galloping run, his paws fresh furred and clenching reflexively. Sanguine wolf sashays of freedom tinctured his escape. He saw the silhouette of another wolf for a moment, unbidden, near fields of saffron and wheat, near god’s touch. The vision faded and scorched pathways of scared earth lay before him, his destiny.
In the grace of a winter reckoning Astor looked to the arid desert sands and agreements of dusty cactus bloom as he found his purpose.

Ron Koppelberger

The Locket’s Secret

The number on the back of the locket was etched and overlaid in silver polish. Endorsed by 999 it read in a confession of craft and proclaimed American pride. Ardent, peculiar, solemn in tempered title the locket was designed in delicate temperament and charm. A coil of fine web circled it’s cleaver reality. Embossed across the front were a duel clutch of flowers, a sprig of dandelions and a single fastened rose.
Simon sighed and pressed the tiny lever of gold on the side of the locket. Lustourous and glowing the locket opened to revelations of ancient persona and beloved blood, a photograph of another time, black and white of two smiling, husband and wife in old seasons of passage. It contained the concerns of past, present and future.
Simon gained his purchase and became that declaration of union, the bonded dream between what had been and what was. In declarations of love he became the seasoned stock of another era. His features melded into the grainy photograph to the spring of life and fashioned affection, his era, his time………he faded and to the revolution of etched portraits in rebirth. Simon, transient inflowing springtime bloom of dandelions and a single rose on his breast returned as the locket remained steadfast in the day, waiting for the dawn of discovery the light of a noonday genius.
Springtime in wont and in need, searching for a conclusion, Simon found his asylum in the past and however intangible the web touched the future with the promise of the secret locket.

Ron Koppelberger

Motionless Assassin

His talent was a calm summery of silence, ragamuffin innocence in the sense that he forestalled the act in degrees of sworn childlike journey; a methodical study in meek assassination, a poise given the expression of thought, thoughts of shaded existence, by grins and nods and silent rebuke, by the rivers edge and upended social rebuke. He was bound by a glance, a stature of prevailing possession. He crafted his plumage with a look, almost innocent and exacting the tears of a bidden drama, then on the eve of good tidings a smirk and a dismissal unto the lifeblood of twilights theater, unto the rays of condemnation, a denial in pausing breaths of ancient supposition.
The making of a moment wrought by the glimmer of chains and the glow of tethered purity, by sleepy eyed shadows and nightmares hidden in a coy ghost of bidden damnation, stooping in shaped perches gone unto the gnarled arms of a graven yield, by connotated cloaks of darkness in quiet vigil. The ravens refrain. In an addicts court a winged angel bidden cleaver by the enemy of the untroubled willow and the sparrow in search of peace. A garden in spite consoled by the wonder of the passerby and the freedom of those who live in the silhouette of love and daydream spirit. By warning and heed the silence of the beast in desolate lashings of human labor.

Ron Koppelberger

An Opus for Ants

“Turn away…….Turn away!” the commander said to the soldier. The soldier ant said,
“But I have this burden to deliver to the queens guard, a burden of nourishment and blood for the secret birth of our children and the nest.” The commander waved his antenna and spun in circles around the soldier and his burden.
“Danger lays in wait by the rivers edge, for the enemy has the deluge and the destruction of our construct!” the soldier ignored the commander and moved on to the place where his burden would be multiplied by the limits of a possible berth. When the soldier ant had found his cache of bidden sustenance he paused and rested for the return home; in a seconds breath the shadow of the enemy approaching filled the sky and the vision of the ants fear. The shadow passed and the ant counted himself lucky in fate.
Later he returned to the nest only to find it awash in an ocean of water and drown comrades. What of the queen he thought. Realizing he was alone his hunger overcame him and he ate the burden intended for the guard and the queen.
“Confessions of mystery, a war fought at odds with the impossible,” he spoke, “But at least I have a belly full of food and my back to build a road unto the next horizon.”

Ron Koppelberger

The Wedding

Vengeful possessive cages and a compromise in secret, there was the plan, the amazing plan. He was certain the amassed fortune, the diamond trust, was an advance on his enduring existence. The planets were in alignment. He was a Libra, Libra liberal economy and his economy was about to become a liberal economy of one.
He was wedded to the fledgling notion of divine guidance. An agreement prior to their marriage had guaranteed him wealth in the event of a divorce. Her chattering cascade of swollen tears and the ensuing soliloquy of trapdoor reasons for a continued relationship were peppered with hard slaps to his face and chest. He looked at her in a mock expression of bewilderment, “ I can’t go on this way, I just can’t!” Visions of gold bullion and freshly inked fifty dollar bills filled his consciousness.
Finally, in a carefully measured tone, she said,” Let’s have dinner first, Maybe you’ll change your mind.” He consented and by twilight-tide light, full with the rush of wine and Fillet Mingnon he vowed to go through with it.
She hesitated, grasping his hand she gave him a wild grin,” Till death do us part!” she whispered romantically. A moment later they heard a roaring engine and squealing tires. The porch faced the busy two lane Azure Drive. The black SUV barreled across the manicured lawn adjacent to the patio with an ethereal ease, tearing the hyacinth blooms she had planted the day of their wedding. The SUV negotiated the patio railing with a screech of metal landing with a crunching thud on both of them, killing them and ending the discussion that had filled their thoughts.
The driver was uninjured and intoxicated to the brim, all he remembered was the woman, that damn ghost, he thought. She had appeared just before he had crashed and she had been laughing and screaming madly, “Till death do we part!”

Ron Koppelberger

The Swaying Cattail

In the spirit of shadow, of gentle twilight passions and desires in velveteen darkness, he studied the cattail down, in perfect pose, still by the source of wonder. He knelt on bended knees amongst the castaway leaves of fall, near the ponds edge. A great grin of possession, the cattail was his, like the firefly light that flittered and swam before him, a legend in myth, a miracle in the alter of astonishing dreams, the cattail swayed before him, tufted and pregnant near the tip. He layed his hands together in prayer, in benedictions grace,

“ Careful violet,

My sweet violet,

Can you speak

Of heaven and the

Dreams of paupers,

Can you allay

The fears of an old

Man my love,

My desire in spring

And my passion in

Fall seasons of

Chance, what in

Cattail down and musty

Earth, what secret do you own,

What belongs to the heart

Of desire and eternal rest,

What seeks your advice from

Scarlet beaded tears unto the

Watery asylum of forever and a

Breath, the watery asylum in clear

Glossy eyes and milky hued skin,

What lay before the temple of

The cattail my sweet violet, my

Love and bond of tomorrow unto

The breech of yesterdays deed,

Yesterdays sin, a sin in

Sleeping demons of drink and angry

Drama, what sin hath a bottle bred?”

He whispered reverently to the wind, to the blood sodden soils and the cattail swaying in white cotton and the single drop of blood. “ What sin?”
He whispered again as he closed his wife’s eyes with pennies from his heart.

Ron Koppelberger

Bristles and Terror

She touched the bristles of the straw broom, her fingertips came away smeared crimson and gray with the dust of a struggle. Small beaded teardrops fell to the wooden floor from the blood stained broom, spattering in tiny blossoms, finely petaled blooms in blushing sinful retreat. She was tapered in rags, burlap hems and heavy cotton sash. Gentle ringlets in golden corn silk haloed her bloody checks, a beauty defined in delicate degrees of warmth.
She returned the broom to an upright sweep and worked the swaying rhythm of mutual discouragement. Pools of cooling blood streaked the floor as she swept away the foolishness of death. The bodies of Frank and Leona Jenkins lay in disarray near the cottage hearth. She had conferred with the shadows in quiet repentance when the couple had invited her into the cottage. She had been searching for food, hands expecting the warmth of another living creature; the door , latched tight in its unbiased remark, its lofty logic, had surrendered its contents as a middle aged man, large silken, worn well in wealth and status. He had opened the door and offered her his hand. She hadn’t perceived him as villainous, nevertheless the truth had borne witness to his evil intent.
She had crossed the threshold quietly thanking the man. He had avoided her gaze as he bolted the door behind her. “You’re ours now babe and we’re gonna have the best time sweetie.” he whispered, “ Purity and grins, grins and ash, grins and ash.” the woman chanted menacingly. His betrayal complete, he grabbed her arm and chuckled, a bit of spittle touched her check. “Grins and ash, save us a kiss for the miss.” the man’s wife laughed.
Her arm hurt where he was holding her and an anger engulfed her in desolate union. She favored her pointed fangs as she grabbed the mans head, pushing it forward and to the left. Her teeth dug deep and he screamed,” Aaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee.” His blood pumped and he fell unconscious, then dead. The woman came at her with a metal poker from the hearth, “ What have you done, what have you done?” she screamed in a rictus of bare teeth and clenched jawbone. The woman flew backward and into the hearth, smashing her head and rolling into the ash pile.
Scrutinizing the smears of blood she mouthed a quiet, innocent prayer for the wont of a vagabond vampire, a desperate enchantress and an unwary vampire in search of haven, in search of respite near bristles and terror, near night and the passion of an endless dream.

Ron Koppelberger

Duck in degrees

The review was an important step in the process, eat, eat, and eat again. Chintz Toss was the foremost master of grilled, baked, roasted, toasted and
Broiled duck. Chintz dreamed duck , dressed in squat duck style and his favorite tune was Disco Duck. The review, he had to focus on the review. One day defined in fine eclectic script, Chintz received a breath of new life, a note of invitation,

“Vex, worry, distress ye heart

For naught, for luck come

And dine with us in gleeful

Affairs of rare duck!!!!!”

The note was signed Cleaver D. Delight purveyor and director of “Hungry Wolf” 210 Red Leaf Lane. Chintz could almost taste the delicious fare. “yum, yum, yum.” he muttered in nervous expectation. The endless progression of duck had finally begun to intrude upon Chintzes’ pleasure, the seduction of a fine meal, in distant horizons and close comfort. He thought of the precious invite. The will to carry on for the sake of flavor and hungry diversity. He knew the meal would revive his interests. To assure the divinity of professed pallets and express taste, he thought. He’d make the Hungry Wolf the bother of garden marms and brawny croakers. Forget the vegetables and frog legs, tis a season for duck and duck and duck. Chintz Marquis Toss dressed in gilded cotton adornments and delicate slippered hands; the white face powder gave him a gaunt definition. He was in earnest urges to exclaim the work ethic of feasting fortune; he slipped on his long black leather boots, leather and expressive. The Hungry Wolf, worthy of my conspiracy in affection for the feathered quarry, he thought as he swept the silken cape around his shoulders. The day moved forward and near noonday tide he made his way to the Hungry Wolf.
The front door was a silhouette done in delicate sprigs of amber glass and
Goldenrod design while the handle was a crystal globe, rainbow hued and in spears of sunshine glow. Chintz touched the knob expectantly as he rotated the crystal. The door gave way to it’s secret and the gravel strewn floor rolled and waved before him. Chintz wanted and continued to dream of duck. He stepped forward into the den of hungry wolves and divine wilds. The tables were wistful emerald spheres with enormous boulders as chairs, large, gray and crimson splashed with feathered gore and bird droppings.
Chintz gasped “breath Toss, Breath!!!” the tender remains of duck soufflés’ and broiled hare stew sat in a giant cauldron nearest the table to his left. The smell was enticing and his stomach intervened as he began shoveling the stew into his practiced mouth. Thus the hunters who had enticed the fare of a fine meal sat in patient compliance with Chintz and his obsession. Chintz faltered for just a moment as the hunting party whooped and howled and growled. The gallery was full, beastly aggressive. Chintz finished and belched in compliment. The paw of one of the hunters touched the gentle throbbing rhythm of his carotid artery and in a moment of realization he understood the penalty as he was devoured in grand fashion.
(The turn is torn by the feast of excess.)

Ravens Blood

The Eye

The Call of The Raven Wild

Ron Koppelberger

The Call of the Raven Wild

Nate Mill always minded the dull drum, the crawl of minutes in pass, the whisper of a hundred breaths in expectant endeavor. He sat perched in waiting desire of drama, he judged the dust in bored fascination and sleepy eyed confessions of stagnation and in this conscious effort to stimulate the hour, the dirge of a passing day, he found the twilight and the Raven wild.
Nate averted the gaze of the setting sun for the bleeding edge of an indigo horizon. He listened and sighed, “Caw, caw!” The Raven had perched itself near the top of a tall pine on a gnarled bough. “Caw, caw!” the Raven sang in wild yells of autumn essence. Nate cupped his hands and called back.
“Caw, caw!” The Raven spread it’s wings and danced in circles on the tree limb.
“Caw, Caw!” it sang in pointed reply. Nate grinned and sang back,
“Caw, caw!” The Raven swooped down to Nate and landed near a rose in full bloom, blood red and candent in silhouette by the orange twilight.
“Caw, caw!” it breathed and invited. Nate whispered in passionate reverie,
“Caw, caw, my love.”
The sky faded to darkness and pinpoints of starlight. The Raven flittered like a moth near Nates face finally resting beside him. In chance and fated change the Raven became a beauty, a princess in person, in coquette and gentle corn silk tethers.
She opened her mouth to sing the Ravens hymn and found words instead, “ My love, my husband, my reason for being, I’ve come to rescue you from your boredom.” Nates heart pounded and the blush of an obsessive desire overcame him.
My love in dreams of confessed bliss and wanting affection, my companion in endless love and forever a jeweled twilight…..”
They found each other in measures of drama, passion and love, and for the rest of the world the song was eternal.

Villain Vast

Ron Koppelberger

Villain Vast

The reservation established the topsey turvey allegiance of great obscene feasts in scarlet row and vast evil burned to the bone. Day by day in scandalous slaughter the château’ de la vernal catered to the elite vivacity of rich affected patrons. They advanced the fortune of magnificent wealth for the delicacies of forbidden fare and forage. Felonious Giraffe tongues and neck steaks a la hummingbird bones, crushed and charred like a demon garnish. Kangaroo eyes summoned to the table in diseased intrigue, acquired through illicit foundries of carnage and finally, the animate breath of human vaunt.
Cannibal succinct, the diners waited for the rare savor of human delight. The sermon of solicited flame incited the cheers of hungry ghouls and fashionable demons as the host announced, “Dinner is served.”
The waiters proceeded to roll out a table with a young woman strapped by harness and braided rope. They rolled the table to the center of the dinning room and in homage to the wriggling woman they bowed and disappeared from the room.
She began praying out loud as the cannibals moved back in to surround her. Her eyes blinked in fluttering supplication as splashes of wine were poured onto her legs. “Our father who art in heaven…..” she prayed. Fields of endless eternal wheat in saffron glow filled her mind as she continued to pray. The tongs of a serving fork prodded her leg as she prepared to die.
In a dramatic turn the room went silent and a whoosh of air filled the empty spaces above their heads. There was a hollow saintly assonance in the air above her as a gentle wave carried the grim receipt of payment to the evil parishioners of death and gibbering slavering hunger.
In unison they fell to the floor, dead, drained of life they lay in heaped tatters about the room. Devoured by the glare of god’s touch.
She lay there in meditative thought as the bonds disappeared. She sighed in relief and set her sights on the vision that had engulfed her. An endless sea of saffron and wheat.

The Neighborhood

Ron Koppelberger

The NeighborhoodThe disposition of slavery frustrated him and he screamed for release, “YYYYYiiiiieeeeeeeeee!” Rain was falling in exasperating waves of teardrop blessing. The neighborhood was unaware, entranced by the ethereal drama, the presence that defined their true transport, their mode of life, their actual status in the universe, in a prevailing evil smoke of duel reality.
The televisions were dressed in a myriad of programs, they saw game shows, but underneath, they saw soap operas, but underneath, they saw movies, but underneath, they saw Sunday football, but underneath lay the truth, the secret reality of a thousand nightmares in scarlet neon.
Juke Sober was watching a movie about Viet Nam, yet beneath his wife was being eviscerated; the action pushed ahead occluding the truth……..and the strange thing was that she was in the next room making a decision between hamburgers and hotdogs. Juke saw up top.
Pepper Holly was watching a western, yet what lay beneath her subconscious and the enchanting dance of a car slamming into a brick wall, a young couple catapulting through the windshield like crimson angels. Flashes of light lit the cotton dander of a cloudy twilight sky. The sound of a woman sobbing drifted across the neighborhood in quiet desperation.
Juke prayed asking god if he was in heaven or hell. The sobbing continued and the mass continued to watch, to act in reverence of what appeared to be their lives, their existence, oblivious to the shadows that surrounded them.
Somewhere distantly a wolf howled in the midst of saffron fields and wheat, in a flash of insight the wolf thought, “ A gilded plane for innocent dreams and waking endeavors unto the promise of what wont pretends.” For a moment they all saw the great garden of wheat bloom.
The wolf rested, waiting for them.