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RL quoting Sahara "Don't you love it when a book kidnaps you?"
RL responding "Yes, yes I do.":excited:

p.s. You do have the most enjoyable avatars

 

bump

 

Oooh thank you for bumping this thread, CrackedJag - I was just going to go find it and post that I'll be setting the next writer's competition later today.

I'll be back in an hour or three, see you all then.

 

PC lashback! With excerpts from a book long gone!

Yours and mine, both!

The PC bastardization of Huckleberry Finn was in the works around the time that A.P. briefly posted the first draft of Beauty here and elsewhere. A.P. and her band of idiots had been so angry about the PC trend that they had intentionally thrown her own protests into the draft. While the book itself is no longer posted on the XNXX story site, many excerpts linger here on the forum. Here is one particularly nasty excerpt, which aims a few verbal sticks and stones at the gay movement.

Mind you, A.P. and the idiots are not homophobic! They take offense not at gays per se, but at the notion that the gay movement is a sacred cow, and must be elevated above criticism and reproach.

The first draft of Beauty also throws a few anti-P.C. barbs at U.S. race relations, partly in response to rumors, which had leaked at the time, that Mark Twain would be rewritten by P.C. revisionists.

Yes, Beauty uses the 'n' word. The irony is that one of the novel's most sympathetically conveyed protagonists is African American. In fact, he ends up being romantically involved with another main character. (The book has never been marked as "Interracial," because it is not "that kind of story." Nevertheless, an interracial romance transpires. The point being that interracial romance should in fact be "natural," and should not require some special attribution.) But I digress.

I do not believe I am going to do what I am about to do, but what the hell. Still trying to decide whether to self-publish all this trash or delete it once and for all. So here are some excerpts. From deep in Beauty. No sex. Just incisive, in-your-face, smash-mouth anti-PC vitriol. In memory of a book that used to be Huckleberry Finn.

Some setup: Gregory Collins and Greta Westford are students at Columbia University. Both are broken. Gregory is a talk-jock for the university radio station. Greta Westford often hangs out in the radio station's soundroom, during the shows, to do her homework. A form of sanctuary. The two seldom ever speak. These are excerpts from Gregory's radio show.

_____________________________
Excerpt One. Gregory Collins at the microphone.

"Shaun. You're on WCLU, live with Mr. Mephistopheles. What's on your mind?"

"Yo, whassup?"

"You tell me."

"Gonna out you, man."

"No need, Shaun, I'll do it for you. I'm a darky, a colored, a spook, a cotton-pickin' boll weevil skippin' Uncle Tom, an admirable black boy. What do you have now, huh? Whaddaya got, nigger?"

"<bleep>"

"Hey, Shaun. Watch the language. I don't want to bomb a brother, but the FCC's listening in, and itching to nail me with fines, so stick to the queen's English. Thanks."

"<bleep>"

"Shaun. Home-boy. Two strikes, nigger. Last chance. Then you get a ban.
Try again."

"Man, you can't say that. That's what I'm sayin'. Can't say that. <bleep>"

"Say what? What can't I say?"

"Can't be callin' me a nigger, man."

"Why? Etymology: of, from or resembling one from the region of central Africa through which runs the Niger. Archaic, and commonly used in the pejorative. But I'm a brother, Shaun, which means it is not pejorative. I can call you a nigger with impunity, brother."

"You ain't no brother, you <bleep>"

"What? Like Clarence Thomas ain't a brother? Like Colin Powell ain't no brother? Like Condie ain't a jetblack motown soul sister? They all Oreos, eggplants, Shaun? They a bunch of half-assed half-black crackers? That what you're sayin'?"

"They ain't black. And neither are you. Not like the President's black. The president. He's black. Those other <bleep>"

"The president! Spare me! Shaun, you're on strike six, so I'll hold you right there. But the president ain't no nigger, Shaun. He doesn't rise to the occasion. He's not Nigerian. His dad is Senegalese. The equivalent of nobility on the Dark Continent. His ancestors were more likely to have been slave traffickers than slaves. And don't tell me Condie's not a sister, just because she don't speak Ebonics. Nice try. Now, the Commander in Chief's wife was likely a slave. That I'll grant you. The First Lady has my respect, before she lifts a finger for anyone. But I ain't cuttin' no slack for that swingin' dick in the Oval Office. The Boss Man's gonna have to stand on his record, and I gotta tell you, Shaun, his legacy ain't lookin' good. Next caller."

_______


At the top of the first hour, Mr. Mephistopheles cut for a break.
Gregory Collins put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and leaned so far back on his chair that he nearly fell to the floor. Without glancing at his ever-present groupie, he asked, "Did you hear a word of that filth?"

"Not a word," Greta Elisabeta quietly replied, without glancing up from her
Transformational Grammar textbook.

"Good," said Gregory Collins.

Danté had postulated the existence of seven circles of hell, possessed of afflictions of ever greater severity. Both Greta Elisabeta Westford and Gregory Collins, independently and without discussion, had long since consigned themselves to the deepest, most abominable circle, where they would suffer through every moment of eternity.
Thus, mere words came easily.

_______________________________________
Excerpt Two. Gregory Collins at the microphone.


"In this segment I want to hear what you think about Broken Presidential Promise Number Six Hundred Seventy-One: the upgrading of the nationwide rail system. Bullet trains from sea to shining sea, and five hundred billion dollars' worth of Stimulus money down the drain. Of course when Mister President came up with this hairbrained idea two years ago, not many of us got our panties in a bunch. It's not like anything ever would have come of it. Just like the war was going to end. Just like we were going to fast-track nuclear plants. Any new nuclear plants breaking ground in your back yards, folks? Hell no. Not this decade. So it's the same with high speed rail. I'm not holding my breath to see my tenement taken by eminent domain to make way for a new bullet train. But that's not the point, is it? The point is not whether they'll ever get around to laying track, but how purportedly intelligent naked apes could have come up with this insanity in the first place. What I want to know from you, on 887-555-1212, is why anyone would think for a minute that this is a good idea. I especially want to hear from callers who are big fans of the rail system that we already have.

"Let's start it off with Kari. Good afternoon, Kari; you're the first caller on WCLU, Columbia University's AM Hominid Radio."

"You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I am, believe me. You can't begin to imagine. But this hour isn't about me. It's about why we'd waste five hundred billion dollars on the Little Engine that Could. So spare me the ad hominem attacks and put up or shut up."

"This country should run on rail, and it would run on rail, if the oil lobby and the automakers hadn't lobbied for the highway system and brainwashed us into thinking we had to burn nine hundred gallons per person per year. Car ownership is the most selfish, wasteful thing imaginable, and the sooner we break ourselves—"

"Kari—"

"break ourselves of—"

"Kariiiii—"

"Let me finish! The sooner we break ourselves of our addiction to the automobile by switching over to high speed rail like Japan and the European Union, the sooner we can bulldoze all the highways, achieve energy independence, and reclaim the land."

"Kari, you do know that trains run on fossil fuel, right?"

"No, the new trains will be electric."

"How do we make electricity, Kari?"

"We'll use alternative energy."

"Oh. So, not this decade, then?"

"We have to start sometime!"

"But Kari, if we stop using cars, we'll have enough fuel for the trains, right? Why wait for alternative energy?"

"Stop twisting it around!"

"Thanks for the call, Kari. Go home and work on your schtick. Edward! Eddie, my main man, what-up?"

"The roofs of the trains are made of what, <bleep>?"
"Manners, Eddie. That's strike one. Trains are made of steel, Eddie. What of it?"

"Why not put solar panels on the roofs of the trains?"

"To do what, Eddie? Flush the commodes in the lavatories?"

"Solar energy is getting more efficient all the time."

"Yeah. But this train toots its horn from sea to shining sea, Eddie. What happens when you're barreling down Dead Man's Notch on some badass mountain in western Colorado, and it starts raining? What then? Do the brakes run on solar, too?"

"The trains will have batteries, you <bleep><bleep>"

"Strikes two and three. Thanks for the call, my main man. Listen, ladies and germs, the boards are lit up and I'll get right back at'cha, but first I gotta get this out there. You're all from Manhattan, northeast Jersey, western Long Island, and the Merritt Parkway. Most of you have the choice of using a train, now, and yet most of you don't. But set your little eco-friendly selves aside for a minute. Is your furniture delivered by train? Is your heating oil delivered by train? When you buy your kids a new swingset for the back yard, does it come to your house by train? Wake up!

"Linda, welcome to the show. Your thoughts, please."

"What was the point of that drivel just now?"

"That's not a thought, Linda, that's a question."

"Yeah, it is."

"Okay, Linda. Here's the thing. The roads? And the highways? They're not for cars. They serve two primary purposes. To facilitate the movement of goods, thereby generating commerce and gross domestic product, and second, to efficiently move defense assets to hotspots in defense of the homeland at time of war. All those cars you mixed nuts are so concerned about? They're just the icing on the cake. The cars that everyone hates so much are an afterthought."

"That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That other caller was right—"

"Linda—"

"Highways are funded because of the oil and auto lobbies—"

"Lindaaaaa—"

"And high speed rail is the oil oligarchy's worst nightmare—"

"Thanks for the call, Linda. Oligarchy. Man. If I hear one more of you mixed nuts call in to tell me that ten people secretly run the world, my bleeping head will explode. Folks, we need the highways. When your washing machine dies, a truck replaces it. When you need a new refrigerator, or a new water heater, or propane for the heater in your forty foot in-ground pool, or a cord of wood for your fireplace, trucks bring all that, too. So unless Mr. President wants to run rail down every street and every driveway in North America, the highways aren't going anywhere. And since we have highways, mixed nuts, and since they're not going anywhere, we might as well drive on 'em, while we're at it. The point is, this the land of the free, and it's nice to have choices. And most people, given the choice, DRIVE.

"Next caller. Sam. Welcome to the show."

"Hi, Mephisto."

"Tell it like it is, Sam. You're up to bat."

"Have you actually read the text of the speech, or at least watched it?"

"Which one? The chief cook and bottlewasher's been campaigning for the past three years of his presidency. I lose track."

"The speech in which the President promulgates the expansion of high speed rail."

"No, I missed that one. What's your point, Sam?"

"That you haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"What, Sam, what? You're telling me you get your heating oil delivered by
Metro Rail? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yeah, yeah, blowhard."

"Yes or no, Sam?"

"I'm not playing your game."

"Yes or no?"

"You've admitted your ignorance just now—"

"You can't answer the question, can you?"

"I don't use heating oil, Mephisto."

"Yeah, and why's that? Because your Mommy pays the bills, right Sam?
While you watch your Messiah every night on Youtube and kowtow in your dirty pajamas, ain't that right, Sam? Right, you sheep? Baaa, Sam, baaa! Baaa!"

"<bleep>"

"Manners, Sam! You sheep! You buy weed by the kilo, don't you? You're a little drug-dazed, pasty, sun-deprived waste-product hiding in Mommy's basement, aren't you? Another happily useful idiot in the ranks of the funemployed, isn't that right? Does your fix come by train or by truck, Sam?"

"You're ignorant."

"And you're a sheep. You're a mixed nut."

"And you have no idea what you're talking about, because you don't know the first thing about the President's position—"

"I don't have to! He has no position! He's a vapid narcissist, Sam! Sorry to break it to you, and burst the bubble of your Glorious Leader! I'll tell you all there is to know about anything he's ever said! I can paraphrase every speech he's ever made with seven words: Look. ooh, ooh, ooh; ahh, ahh, ahh."

"<bleeeeeeep>"

"Thanks for the call, Sam. Your contribution to today's discourse has been truly enlightening."

_______

Mr. Mephistopheles broke to commercial, and Gregory Collins rubbed his eyes, staring through the ceiling. He heard a low chuckle. He sighed and turned. Greta did not look at him, but she wore the tenuous precursor of a smirk. Gregory had never seen her smile, not once. This would not be the time, but she would come close.

"You heard some of that filth, didn't you?"

"You're in rare form."

___________________________________
Excerpt Three. New Year's Eve. Gregory's Other Side.


Greta half-expected to find Gregory waiting for her in the lobby. Thankfully no one occupied the space apart from herself and the front desk guard. She strode forward and pushed herself through the front revolving door.
Then she saw him, nearly eighty yards away, across the concrete pavilion, with his back to her. He had lingered, at a crosswalk, to give her the choice: to either follow, or not.

She growled with frustration.

He began to walk. And God help her, she followed.

Greta maintained pace through the city, always a block behind. He waited every time she dropped out of view. She followed him north for at least a mile, and perhaps two. She often lost him in the steadily accumulating throngs of tourists who seemed to pour out of cracks and crevices to slither down the sidewalks toward the epicenter of the New Year, Times Square. The mob walked southward, and she fought against the gathering tide.

She kept a watchful eye for Tanya, too. Indeed, she struggled to memorize faces that she passed and compared new faces against her recent recollections, struggled to discern a pattern, or identify the repetition of a face, a repeat, a tell-tale sign of having been followed from Columbia. She had to hand it to these people who were gunning for Gregory, this cabal that had ensnared Tanya and turned her into one of its tools: they were certainly patient. But now, on the advent of the general election year, Greta suspected that they, whoever they were, would become impatient for results.

Upon turning one last corner, she saw him in the distance, halfway down the block, facing a dilapidated stairway. He must have spotted her appearance, yet without turning or in any other way acknowledging her presence, he slowly ascended the stairway, turned a key, and disappeared through a door. She sighed and shuffled down the sidewalk. She tried not to glance to the left or right. No tourists walked this road. Cars passed infrequently, and invariably clattered and clanked down the pavement in such a way as to make her mother's old Toyota seem like an opulent limousine by comparison. The cars along the road were wrecks, stripped down to the frames, all bearing evidence that people lived within.

Not far from the stairway that Gregory had ascended, she stopped to contemplate a giant rusting hulk, little more than a frame, looming overhead like the bleached ribcage of a dragon jutting up out of the sands of a desert.

Her gray, duct taped rags did not seem too out of place here, but she had to pull the gray hood far over her head, to conceal the pallor of her skin. She trudged lethargically through slush, wrapped tightly in her cloak. She spied men across the street, seven of them, some of whom flaunted bare chests and necklaces made of heavy yellow chains. They stood around a fire that roared from within a trash barrel like a pair of gnashing pitbulls. The banter of the men died down as the new attraction, Greta, approached on the opposite side of the street. Two of them nodded and started to cross.

Greta abruptly turned and trudged up the stairs. She could no longer hear the footsteps of the two men. Evidently they waited, in the road, to ascertain whether Greta belonged here. She knew that should she be denied entry, she might never return to the world.
She ascended crumbling stairs, toward a towering black steel door. The facade, dominated by boarded windows and iron bars, looked more like a jagged firebreak than a building with a hollow interior capable of hosting live occupants. Yet Gregory Collins dispelled that illusion, and most likely saved her life in the process, by opening the door before she reached the buzzer.

He held the door open, and made no attempt to take her hand. She walked inside without a word. He slammed the door shut with a clang, and bolted it. Greta pulled the caul off her head and looked up to see dim twilight drifting down the chimney of the ten story interior. She stood on a white tile floor, surrounded by the courses of a wooden spiral staircase.

"I've already called a cab for you."

"So desperate to be rid of me?"

He grimaced and said, "It'll take them two hours to show up here." He walked toward an open first floor doorway, another feeble source of light. Greta followed. She heard voices within.

She entered a bright office with gray filing cabinets along two walls, and two rows of eight old-fashioned steel desks. Five desks were currently occupied with workers, well dressed young people who were most likely still students.

He stopped at the desk of a matronly woman dressed in a pressed blue smock, and he said, "Darlene, please go home."

"No, no. I've brought noise makers for all the kids. Party hats, too."

"You didn't have to do that."

Darlene just snorted at him, and waved Gregory away. He would not be deterred, however. From his coat, out of some voluminous pocket, like a magician performing sleight of hand, he produced four bottles of champagne.

"Not for the kids," he warned. "Some of you are under twenty-one, but I won't tell if you don't. Happy New Year, everyone."

Darlene hopped up from around her desk and hugged Gregory. The rest of the staff exchanged New Year's Greetings. Greta silently watched from the doorway. She had the distinct sense that they knew that they would not see him again for the rest of the evening. Indeed, they would most likely not see each other, once their rounds began, and they vacated their desks. They would work all night, with the children— whoever they were. So now, at four in the afternoon, they reveled in the new year. Greta had not yet cracked the riddle of this place. She only knew that good, wholesome people staffed the premises— people like Gregory, and Darlene, and the others for whom she did not yet have names. She knew that this place, and its work, and the people within it, had the respect of the gang members across the street. This place clung to life on a street that was dead, like fungus upon a rotten log.

Gregory did not offer to introduce Greta, and none of the staff inquired. They did not even look at her. They no doubt surmised that if she had wanted to have been introduced, her escort, Gregory, would have made overtures.

One of the other men poured champagne into small paper cups. He handed a cup to Gregory and made an almost imperceptible glance toward Greta. Gregory shook his head just once, and the other man capped the champagne.

Gregory raised his cup and said, "A toast. To the children. To healing. And to the New Year."

"Hear, hear," went the somber chorus all around, and the staff drank.

Then they returned to work. Some took their seats. Others nodded briskly to Greta as they passed by and headed upstairs, to destinations unknown to her. Gregory politely struggled to extricate himself, but he did not make it easy. Other staff would arrive from upstairs, and the well-wishes would start up again. Eventually the strangely moribund revelry exhausted itself. Gregory made his way back to Greta, and led her back out into the cold, austere foyer. The sun had retreated their corner of the world, and now the skylights high above looked dingy-gray. The lights of the staff office cast shallow brightness into the first story or two of the foyer. All else above them deepened into darkness.

"Have you guessed what this place is, yet?"

Greta shuddered and said, "I have been on a descent to hell for longer than I can remember. I am thinking that maybe I have finally arrived."

Gregory leaned against a wall, and sank down onto his heels. He mumbled, "It is literally either a hell of my own making, or purgatory. I won't live long enough to know the truth."

"You, Darlene, and the others all mentioned children."

He nodded and said, "Nelson and Jessica took the tour. Back in the summer. When they convinced me to stand in their wedding."

Greta's mouth dropped open and said, "They came to New York with us. A few days after Teddy's funeral."

"Teddy?"

She shook her head distractedly and said, "Nelson's grandfather. Not important. My father said that Nelson and Jess had a mission of their own. I didn't believe him. I thought they were only chaperones, to put me at ease. But they came here for you. To talk you into returning to Columbia."

He smiled wanly and said, "No, not quite that much. Just to stand in their wedding as best man. The pitch to return to Columbia came later. From Nelson's father and some old Harvard professor named Arnold— I presume he must be Nelson's other grandfather. Although now you mention it, I do wonder. Maybe their ultimate goal was to get me back into school all along."

"They are crafty."

"I've noticed," he acknowledged.

"And they really are smarter than any of us. By so many levels of magnitude that it's sometimes terrifying."

"I've noticed that, too."

Greta pondered aloud, "Have you ever seen Jessica's Instruction Manual?"

"Her what?"

"Never mind."

He stared at her for a minute, and had to look up to do it, because Greta slowly paced on the tiles, taking crisp perpendicular about-faces on along the cracks. He said, "I guess I'll never know what they originally intended when they first showed up. They came directly here, to this place, you see. I gave them the full tour. And as healthy and whole as they are, as much as they complete each other, this place was too much, even for them. Nelson may have intended to try to convince me to return to school, but in the end he only invited me to the wedding."

Greta stopped her pacing, and looked up at the distant skylight. Her eye followed the barely perceivable spiral of the winding staircase, down its gradual spiral, through its dark descent.

"The children, Gregory. You mentioned children. How many?"

"This is a house for children. Broken children, like us. Children past any hope of repair."

She looked down at him with a fierce glare and demanded, "How many?"
"It varies by the week. Tonight? Nine-seven."

Greta closed her eyes. Her knees buckled. The tiles rose up, ever so slowly, to meet her. She came to rest upon her haunches, legs crossed, and put her head in her knees. "Ninety-seven children? Here, in this horrible place?"

"Yes," said Gregory.

She looked up and said, "You returned to Columbia. Why? How did Vernon and Arnold convince you?"

"They neither said nor explained much of anything. Their optimism convinced me. The whole bachelor party. After years of this, their optimism was infectious. They went on about the Kansas Project, whatever that is."

"The Assembly Facility."

"I gathered it had something to do with manufacturing. The bachelor party was a series of tours. Through foundries and machine shops they had sold. Robotics— machines that looked state of the art to me— that they mocked and dismissed, piled up for scrap. They carried a chilled cooler to every site, and each time the wrecking balls let loose, they drank to Kansas."

"Did a single one of them ever once tell you what is happening in Kansas?"

"No, but I gather it's big. At one point later on, in a Japanese restaurant that one of them still owns, they toasted the death of China."
Greta shuddered. Not at the toast, but at the recollection of the Japanese restaurant, and its owner.

"They didn't sound like they were kidding," Gregory added.

"They weren't." She shuddered again, and he just watched her. Then she asked, "Tell me. The restaurant owner. How was he?"

"As crazy and wild and optimistic as all the rest of them. I guess it infected me. So I said yes to Vernon and Arnold. I came back and returned to my old adviser, and reinstated my matriculation at Columbia. But the giddy enthusiasm didn't last long. Then I returned here. And I've been right back in hell, ever since."

"Gregory, I know you think that radio show is helping you. But it is killing you. It is going to kill you, literally."

"What happened to you this month?"

"I can handle myself," she snarled. "But you. You have to get out."
"Ahh, it's too late."

"What does that mean?"

"They're onto me. They don't have to kill me literally, Greta. They've made the connection, between me and Mr. Mephisto, and they have motive. They don't need proof."

"What do you mean, they don't have to kill you?"

"This place. It's no secret. The whole Psychology and Sociology departments know about this place. Most of the staffers in that office are Columbia grad students. And I don't own this building. Hell, I don't even rent. I just moved in one day and replaced all the lightbulbs. The city would never bother to evict me, but the enemies of the radio show have tracked down the owners of the building. Counseled them, as to the liability of having as illegal squatters an illicit hospital staff in charge of ninety-seven severely imbalanced orphans. We expect to be served with eviction notices and indictments in thirty days at most."

"What will happen to the children?

Gregory bitterly replied, "They'll become wards of the city. Of course, that's how they started out, before we took them in."

They remained in the foyer, and said not another word. Greta sat crosslegged directly under the central skylight, her head in her lap. Gregory sat against the wall, shrouded under the stairwell. There they remained, until the taxi arrived at five o'clock to take Greta back to her apartment.


_________

Gregory Collins escorted Greta out the door and down to the cab. Night had fallen, and the fire in the trash can provided the only illumination to the obliterated street. Gregory gave stiff, perfunctory nods to the hoods who had grown in numbers since Greta had arrived.

The taxi driver said, "You're the only reason I come within a mile of this place."

Gregory thanked him by slipping him a hundred dollars. "Happy New Year," he said.

"You da man."

"Wherever she wants to go."

"As I just said," the taxi driver assured him.

The crowd steadily accumulated as the taxi progressed toward more traveled areas of the city. First night revelers spilled off the sidewalks and into the streets. Many traffic intersections had succumbed to gridlock. And yet, six hours remained to the old year. All the way back, Greta weighed the pros and cons of being dropped off right at her door. She did not want the taxi driver to know where she lived. The taxi driver was at least acquainted with Gregory Collins. The driver might call her building address back to Gregory. Or worse, someone could be following the cab that very moment, a member of the cabal that had already begun the process of forcing the eviction of Gregory and all his children. She was almost certain that no one had followed her to the Student Union, or on her long walk to Gregory's illicit sanitorium. She had not seen Tanya in weeks. Besides, it was New Year's Eve, and everyone had gone home. In the end, she decided that the best way to protect Gregory would be to minimize the number of possible connections between herself and him. She decided that it would be best if the taxi driver did not know where she lived. Two blocks before her own street, she said, "Drop me off right up there on the corner."

"That where you live, Miss?"

"No."

"Miss, da man and his friend Benjamin were clear. See you home safely.

Dig?"

"Yes. But I'm meeting someone for dinner. Just there. At the corner."

She saw him scan her up and down, through the rear view mirror, with a look of unconcealed disgust. "Dinner? Dressed like that?"

"Yes. Like this."

"Okay. If you're sure."

"I'm sure. Thank-you."

He pulled up and stopped. She pushed another forty dollars through the slot in the plexiglass.

"Hey! Hey, now. No! No way!" He tried to push it back.

"That's for you. For keeping your mouth shut. You dropped me off at home, and forgot the address. If Gregory ever asks."

"You're crazier than he is."

"I know. Happy New Year."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks."

Greta stood on the sidewalk, watched the cab pull out, sighed, and started to walk the final two blocks. She had to struggle through the increasingly dense, raucous crowd of humanity that swarmed in every direction simultaneously, to First Night celebrations throughout the island. She seriously considered slipping into a restaurant, just to escape the crowds. Although the cab driver could not have known it, Greta carried more than enough money, in her black Dymetrix Corporation credit card, to dine absolutely anywhere in Manhattan, irrespective of her decrepit attire. But she did not want to sit alone, at a candlelit table, and pretend to enjoy an ostentatiously presented dinner while scratching away, alone, in her notebook on New Year's Eve. What she wanted was to go home, lock her door up tight, and cuddle the night away with Jennyanydots. She resolutely ignored all the beckoning neon and pressed onward, toward her own block.

Greta turned onto her corner and was nearly mowed down by an onrushing stampede of horn and kazoo toting revelers who had just received a WALK signal behind her. She fought through the rush, elbows out, and wished, not for the first time, that she had not given up carrying box cutters.
The waist-high iron grating came into view, the little doorway that opened onto the narrow stairway down to her apartment. She sighed with relief. Finally, she would escape the madness and enclose herself and her pretty kitten safely within her sanctuary. She grabbed onto the handle of the iron grating, and three tall forms in long coats, who had been walking in the opposite direction, instantly turned and surrounded her.
Greta's nostrils flared with alarm.

A small figure, on the edge of the curb, who had been hailing a cab, abruptly turned, removed her hood, and smiled.

"Happy New Year, Greta," said Tanya.


____________________________________
Gregory's Last Columbia Radio Show



"Do I ever have a show for you today, mixed nuts. This one's right up your alley, and it's an exclusive, because no one thinks it's newsworthy. The big scoop happened yesterday, and didn't get a shred of coverage. Maybe it's because we've achieved a post-racial society. Maybe it's the new era of responsibility. Maybe coverage of this story is below the pay scale of the city press corps. No matter. This story will be covered tomorrow, on top of the fold, mixed nuts. I guarantee it.

"What happened yesterday, you ask? Before dawn, in ten degree weather, under light snowfall, you ask? I'll tell you, because today's show is dedicated to the comedy of unforeseen consequences, the circus of ends justifying means, the talent of bureaucrats to miss their own hypocrisy. This show is about Lenin's nine million, Hitler's six million, Stalin's eleven million, Mao's eight million, Pol Pot's two million, and all the mass graves filled with good intentions, reasoned judgment, unforeseen consequences, and expedience justified by ends. This show's about mass death perpetrated by visionaries. And just to bring it all home and give my rant some local color, this show's also about ninety-seven indigent children, the most helpless among us, ninety-seven inconsequential little bugs caught in the path of a bulldozer driven by local minions of a tawdry machine politician, a supposed genius too dense and obdurate to see, in his own bleeping mirror, that he's become a cipher, a tautological joke, both question and punchline, wrapped up into the tired teleprompted schtick of one pathetic clown. This show is about that clown, and his intention to run for re-election, and ninety-seven voiceless nothings, tossed out onto the street yesterday in sub-zero weather, to pave the way for Episode Two of the divine comedy.

"Get on those phones, mixed nuts! Let's make some news! Top of the fold, tomorrow morning!"

Greta was already on the move, had carried the radio through the library into her ridiculously vast bedroom, was already pulling patent leather boots up her calves. She wriggled into a straight, seamless dress that draped off her torso like a robe and completely obscured her gender. She snatched one of the handheld house management remotes off an end-table and punched a button.

"How may I assist, Ms. Westford?" James Green inquired.

"I need a car."

"Is this a social or shopping excursion, Ma'am?"

"No."

"Very well."

Five minutes later, she strode through the lobby and followed James Green to a subterranean parking garage, where she hopped into a black limousine and took a seat facing two bodyguards. The driver pulled out and inquired as to the destination. She gave the driver the street address of Gregory's illicit hospital. The bodyguards grimaced.

"Not advisable," said the driver.

"Take me there! Now! Or I'll jump out and hail a fucking cab."

The driver steeled himself and said, "Yes, Ma'am."

They drove by the building, festooned with a police cordon made of shiny yellow tape. Large red signs had been fastened to the door handles and first floor window gratings, signs which read, 'CONDEMNED.'

The black steel door stood ajar. Shadows moved within. Derelict automobiles had been bulldozed into a pile to create parking spaces for the police. Four unmarked city and federal cars occupied the new curbside spaces.

Greta's driver said, "Ma'am, it is not possible to stop."

She did not answer.

He drove right by the building, at ten miles per hour, and asked Greta for new instructions.

"Take me to the Columbia University Student Union."

The bodyguards grimaced again. The driver shifted in his seat.

"What? Why the hell is that 'not advisable?' I'm a student there."

"A demonstration is gathering there, Ms. Westford. It will likely necessitate police action."

"Get me there. Fast."


_______


On the way to the Student Union, she repeatedly dialed the radio show's main call line. The boards already had to be lit up from end to end. She repeatedly got a busy signal. On the eleventh call, not a hundred yards from the Student Union, she finally got a ring tone, and the call screener answered.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"This is Mephisto's groupie. I'm coming up, and I don't have this week's door code."

"Mr. Mephistopheles takes no visitors today."

"Tell Gregory Collins that Greta is on the way up. Tell him. I'll wait."
The line went dead for ten seconds, Then the call screener came back on and said, "Come up alone, or the guard won't open the door."

"Five minutes," said Greta. "Thank-you."

_______


The limousine pulled right up to the front of the building. The gathering had not yet coalesced into a disruptive force, but more then forty students and adults had gathered in the plaza and clearly yearned for direction. Some of them wandered toward the limousine, perhaps expectant that their designated leader would emerge.

"Wait here, please," Greta said to the driver.

"If you're inside for more than ten minutes, we might have to park across the plaza."

"Fine. Just don't leave. Wait for me."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Ten mixed nuts had gathered around the passenger door and peered into the smoked windows, in search of their leader.

The bodyguards stepped out, and cleared a path merely by imposing themselves.

The driver said, "I can't leave the wheel. The bodyguards will escort you into the building lobby. Don't talk to anyone. Don't look at anyone. The bodyguards will wait in the lobby until you are ready to be escorted out. They will call me, and I will pull up to the door, or as close to the door as I can get. In the meantime, we will summon reinforcements."
Greta nodded.

A bodyguard opened the door, and she stepped out into a raucous maelstrom, ten questions simultaneously asked at a strident pitch and amplitude, making it impossible to discern a single word. She trotted in doubletime to maintain stride with the bodyguards. Her refusal to engage or even acknowledge the crowd, paradoxically, caused its numbers to swell. The initial inquiries, the requests for leadership, turned to resentment and then rage, as the crowed surmised that she could not be one of them, and therefore had to be other.

The bodyguards ushered her into the building, and straight into the company of four armed university policemen. The ranking officer asked Greta, "Do you know what you're doing here?"

"Yes."

"You picked a bad afternoon for a social call."
She ignored the remark from the university policeman and said to her bodyguards, "Wait. Don't leave."

"Yes, Ma'am."

She strode through the empty lobby to the elevators, rode to the fourth floor, and walked to the blank white door.

The security guard opened the door as she approached, admitted her, and swiftly closed it. She watched him barricade the door with an iron bar bolted into the floor.

"Big news day," she said.

The security guard and sighed, "I like Greg. I'm going to miss him when he gets himself killed."

Greta chuckled and said, "Don't hold your breath. He's already been dead and come back."

"So he's Christ among us?"

"Something like that."

_______


Greta slipped into Sound Stage Three, shut the door behind her, and took her usual chair along the wall, as though she had been coming every day, and this particular day constituted just another episode in a series.

Mr. Mephistopheles had just cut to commercial. He did not acknowledge her presence. He glared into the production booth. Greta could see, through the plexiglass wall, that the production coordinator and two sound engineers were standing and glaring back at him. The production coordinator railed loudly enough to shake the glass of the window. He had not bothered to switch his microphone on, but Greta could read lips. Mr. Mephistopheles had apparently outdone himself in the last set.
Gregory Collins abruptly turned and gave her a soft, tentative smile. "I've missed you, groupie." His eyes flashed up and down her black designer dress, boots, coal black sunglasses, and black beret. "I like the new look."

"Don't let the look fool you," she advised. "Nothing has changed. Nothing, whatsoever."

The production coordinator rapped on the plexiglass window. Gregory ignored him.

"Are they angry about the demonstration brewing on the plaza?"

"No. I'm not sure they even know about that. They're mad about my last set."

"Oh? Why, in particular?"

He shrugged and said, "I had a brainstorm. Totally unrehearsed, so no one saw it coming, not even me. Anyway, Mr. Mephistopheles has added a new twist to his schtick."

"I can't wait to hear it."

"Thirty seconds," he assured her.

He shrugged at the yelling coordinator and the engineers and said, "Just to inform you, they're not lashing out on some higher principle. They're just cowards. They're convinced we're all going to be lynched."

Greta winked and said, "I don't know about them, but don't worry your little head. I've got you covered."

He arched an inquisitive eyebrow, and she explained, "We have a ride.

Waiting downstairs. Whenever you're ready."

"I think I'll hang out until the barbarians storm the walls, if it's all the same to you."

"Suits me," said Greta.

The phone rang. Gregory glanced at the phone's LCD display and groaned,

"Fuck. I've gotta take that. Hold on." He punched vox, and suddenly the room filled with the vociferous bellowing of the production coordinator. Gregory made the sign for 'time out,' and told the production coordinator to run another ad loop.

_______

"Gregory, you've totally lost it."

"First Amendment in action, Professor."

"You're inciting a riot down on the plaza."

"Oh, no I'm not. Those clowns need no help from me."

"Greg, the Dean wants me to pull the plug."

"Then do it! Pull it!"

"You know I don't want to do that. But if that crowd outside doesn't disperse, I'll have no choice."

"Professor, you understand what happened yesterday, don't you? Yesterday is democracy denied. A small group of cowards turned ninety-seven children, the weakest among us, out into the cold. To get to me. To muzzle me. To deny a half million listeners a reasoned contrarian perspective. You shut this microphone off, and they win. A half million listeners will lose a point of view, and they'll have nothing for news but myrmidons and pollyannas. Is that what you want, professor?"

"Greg, hear me out. I'm authorized to offer you three hours, on the prime slot. Rush hour. Three to six."

"Oh, right!"

"I mean it. Effective tomorrow. The university has also been approached by attorneys for ten local affiliates. They are offering syndication. You would have seventeen million listeners from central Long Island to northwest Jersey, on the homebound commute."

A voice cut into the booth. "Gregory. Thirty seconds to on-air."

Gregory hissed, "In exchange for what?"

"No conditions, Gregory."

"Bullshit. You want something. What is it?"

"I only want you to do what you should be doing anyway, and would be doing, if you stopped and thought about it."

"What?"

"Disperse the crowd in the plaza."

"How?"

"Recant the last segment."

Gregory hung up, slamming the receiver down hard on the cradle. "Motherfucker! Fucker, fucker, fucker!"

The phone rang again.

Gregory ripped the cord out of the wall, and threw the phone across the room.

"Gregory. Fifteen seconds."

He glared at Greta, who grinned at him and muttered, "In my experience, people are seldom ever reasonable."

"Five. Four. Three. Two...."

"Good afternoon, Sodom and Gomorrah. This WCLU-AM,
Columbia No-Clue Radio, and I'm your ever affable host, broadcasting from the Land of Perdition, Mr. Mephistopheles, the nation's first Black African American White Supremacist. The lines are lit up, and I sense a lot of sour grapes and utterly unreasonable angst out there, so let's get right to it. Let's start it off with Tyrone in the dumpster. Hey Tyrone, what-up?"

"<bleep> <bleep> <bleep>"

"Hey, Tyrone, dude, crawl out of that dumpster, nigger, your cell's breaking up."

"<bleep> <bleep> <bleep>"

"Sorry, Tyrone, good points, but no one can hear you. Call back when you get a better signal. Let's go to Rachel in the dorm. Rachel, welcome to the show."

"Hi, Mephisto. Long time, first time."

"Thanks, Rachel. What's on your mind?"

"I know that what happened yesterday at the hospital is awful, but don't you think you should just take a few days off or something?"
"The show must go on, Rachel. I can't just quit."

"All I'm saying is that if you took a breather, you might see things differently."

"Ninety-seven kids, Rachel. Ninety-seven. With mental and physical disabilities ranging from moderate to severe. They don't get a day off, Rachel. They don't get a breather. They're on the street, getting hungrier and colder by the hour."

"Come on, Mephisto. They're not on the street."

"Sure, sure. It's metaphorical, I admit. They're not literally freezing on the sidewalk. They're just freezing in the city looney bin, locked in barred cells adjacent to the same serial child rapists who ruined and broke them in the first place. Thanks for your concern, Rachel, and thanks for the call. Let's go to Leon in the pub. Welcome to the show, Leon."

"Hi there, <bleep>"

"Manners, Leon. This is a family show. What's on your mind?"

"The last caller was right, jerk. Them kids are all better off outta that hell hole of yours. There are safety nets—"

"Safety nets? Safety nets, Leon? No, Leon. There are no safety nets. I was their safety net. Me, and my hell hole. Now they'll go right back into the meat grinder, where I found them, to be raped and buggered and whored again, Leon, as though my stinking hell hole had never interrupted the nightmare."

"You are so full of it. You're just grandstanding for personal gain."

"Gain? What gain? You know, Leon, you're right. I get my kicks out of daily death threats. I get my jollies out of being knocked out of bed by a Taser and kicked out on the sidewalk at five AM to be pistol whipped by New York's finest. Thanks for the call, Leon. Have another early afternoon shot of bourbon, and call me back.

"Let's go to Professor Margaret in the plaza. Professor Margaret, it's been, what? A week, since you've called in to vilify me?"

"Everyone knows you've lost your way, Mephisto, but you've crossed the line by a mile this afternoon."

Mr. Mephistopheles laughed heartily and admitted, "True, true. But you have to admit that life gave me a big push."

"There are more than three hundred people out here, and growing by the minute. And the police are arriving in trucks."

"Sounds like a hell of a party. I just might come down and join you."

"<bleep>"

"Tut-tut, professor. Don't use the real name on-air. Mr. Mephistopheles, if you please."

"Sorry. Mr.—uhh— Mr. M., just what do you mean by calling yourself a— a—"

"A white supremacist?"

"Yes. That. What is that, if not an incitement to riot?"

"It's an epiphany, nothing more."

"It is irresponsible, foolish, and puerile. Even for your radio persona. You're smarter than that, <bleep>"

"Professor, the name again. Sorry. Gotta stop you right there. No soul searching today; you're busting my groove, but thanks for the call.

"Let's go to Professor Brown, at the Starbucks overlooking the brewing riot. Hey, Professor, didn't we just talk rap on the phone a minute ago? I hope you're not trying to monopolize my time."

"Professor Margaret underestimated the crowd outside, Mephisto. And the television crews are arriving, too. If you wanted your media coverage, you've succeeded. Why don't you call it quits? Call it a day."

"I don't think so, Professor Brown. My listeners haven't heard my manifesto, yet."

"Manifesto?"

"Sure. I can't just call myself a white supremacist without a manifesto."

"I thought you said this insanity was just an off-the-cuff brainstorm."

"Sure, it is. And my manifesto is off the cuff, too. It won't take effort.

See, for the first time in my life, I'm ashamed to be an African American."

"I'm not listening to this."

"Come on, Professor Brown, be a sport! Professor Brown! What? Did we lose him? Damn. We lost him. Call back, Professor Brown.

"Oh! Mystery caller. Cool. Mr. X, welcome to the show."

"Son, what are you doing?"

Greta's head jolted up, and she locked eyes with Gregory, whose visage had been frozen in an expression of anguish. Then he recovered.

"Dad! Hey, Daddy-O! What an honor! It's been, what? A year? Two?

You've never called into my personal hell before. Didn't know you ever listened, to be honest."

"Greg, can't you just call it a day and come home?"

"Father-mine, you're killing my vibe here. You're wrecking my image.

Niggers aren't supposed to have daddies. They're supposed to be raised on gritz and fried chicken by Grandma and Aunt Jemima."

"Son, your mother is crying in the kitchen. Come home."

"I would, Dad, but no can do. Got a job to do. No rest for the weary. Let's keep in touch, and thanks for the call.

"Okay, folks. I'll be back to the phones in just a minute, but now it's my turn for a self-indulgent polemic. Where I was headed, before I was rudely interrupted— family can be so embarrassing— was that I see nothing, whatsoever, in my own race to admire. Our homeland, Africa, is supposedly the cradle of civilization. We've had by far the longest start out of the gate, yet we've done nothing but cut our own throats and blame everyone else for the cutting. Elsewhere civilization thrived, and we languished. We've blamed the slave traders, yet the Europeans and Americans found a thriving slave trade in Africa and merely capitalized on it. While the Mesopotamians, Assyrians, and Egyptians experienced their golden ages, we played our drums and cultivated yams. Imperial China experienced its golden age, and we ate roasted yams, and played our drums, and fought skirmishes that will never be remembered. Classical Greece and Rome rose and fell, and we sold our children as slaves, and played our drums, and invented lip-piercing, and subsisted on yams. The Holy Roman Empire gave way to the Renaissance, and while the Europeans colonized the New World, and sent our children across the sea as slaves, we traded those same children, and played our drums, and made shiny crap out of brass, and ate our yams.

"The indignities persist to the present day, and we still fight a thousand inconsequential skirmishes and cull ourselves from a world that will never remember our faceless hordes in its histories. Occasionally the Dark Continent produces rare jewels in the rough, and we send them to American and European universities for finishing. Achebe, who won his token Nobel Prize for novels that he couldn't commence without token citations to English and Irish poets. Okigbo, who couldn't write a poem worth mention without rifling Judeo-Christian heritage for imagery and cultural allusions. Soyinka, who could barely string words into a poem or play without using Elizabethan forms for scaffolding and ancient Greek heritage for mortar. Trite, derivative laughingstocks, all, with their token affirmative action accolades.

"And then, by-and-by, we come to my dearly beloved mixed nuts, my loyal listeners on these shores, who've put their lives and dreams on hold to wait with their hands out for the munificence of their anointed Messiah. You've been waiting four years, mixed nuts! How are those reparations coming? Seen your checks in the mail yet? And while you've been doing nothing but panhandling, you've lost your ability to think, haven't you? And you have no idea what I'm talking about, because you've lost all sense of cultural heritage, and all sense of yourselves, and even those pretenders, those profligates who've reaped token honors and affirmative action Nobel Prizes, the Christopher Okigbos and Wole Soyinkas and Chinua Achebes of your homeland, mean nothing to you, do they, mixed nuts? Well, I've lost myself, too, mixed nuts. I've lost my own way, and see nothing in my heritage worthy of admiration. Nothing but self-imposed shackles. We abrogated our chance, and our place in history. The white man reigns supreme. The white man has given this world virtually every advancement. The white man has given me this soap box, and the university that houses it, and has given me the luxury to agonize over the chances that the black man has had and lost. I believe in giving credit where it's due, and so I am, mixed nuts, a loyal adherent of the doctrine of white supremacy—"

Greta looked up again.

All the lights had gone out, all but an emergency beacon mounted on the wall behind her head.

Gregory opened his eyes in the dark room, and stared at the production coordinator, who stared back at him from his own dark room. One of the sound engineers ran out, came around, and opened the door.

"Everything's dead. They must have cut the power to the building." Then he gave a thumbs up and said, "Nice manifesto, Greg. Good luck getting out of here alive."


_____________________________

So. As I said somewhere above, even after this filth has been cleaned up and made into something-that-is-not-porn, it is still controversial, inflammatory, disturbing. Opinions? Comments? Should aesexual pseudonym self-publish it, or delete it????


Colleen

 

In a word: "RIVITING". It seems that there are many of us who look with an evil eye at the PC-spouting idiots in the world.

 

I lied.



Sorry folks, I'm really tired and about to head off to bed soon, I'll be back tomorrow (about this sort of time) and I'll start the ball rolling then.
That fits in quite nicely though, as it will give all the writers exactly seven weeks to come up with a story, before the planned closing date of 28th February.

Speak to you all tomorrow!


Jayney x

 

A.P./Colleen/Et Al,

Absolutely HILARIOUS!!!
Don't you damn dare delete.
Y'all must have some nappy-headed hoes amongst you.:lol::lol::lol:
...

 

Col-

Don't even think about deleting.

I don't know squat and am often in the minority in my opinions. I'm also regularly foolish in my comments. And giving poor advice is nothing new for me either. But I'm still occasionally tempted to crawl out from under my nice safe rock and make a fool of myself. Again.

My guess is that losing the porn is mostly a good thing. A lot of it was too much for me and probably many. Being a lover of emotional roller coasters makes whatever replaced the sexual suffering a big deal.

For myself, Greta's fate was eventually the biggest hook. How the de-porning changes Greta's background is important to me. Wanting desperately to see her survive after her extreme journey through hell was very motivating. Some sort of journey through hell is still needed in that respect.

Jessica's trip from being a young girl in a humble setting to becoming an international protegy was my first hook. Seeing Nelson tamed by Jessica was big. The age difference there was a huge item for me. Hopefully. the de-porning allowed that to remain.

Expanding my vocabulary was fun but probably a pain in the butt for many.

My opinion of the original is that it needs to be broken up into several smaller books because the time commitment required to read books that long is intimidating. The length of the chapters was also too long for me. Having to read until 2:00 AM to get to a convienient stopping place was a constant cause of sleep deprivation.

I don't know much about self-publishing but it sounds like a lot of work to do it right. I think it would be a crime to continue to keep the books unavailable anywhere. What are your goals if you decide to self-publish? Are those goals worth the time and effort needed to maximize your chances of succeeding?

I would guess that a smaller book limited to Jessica's preteen and early teen years and the beginning of her romance with Nelson would have a lot of appeal. If it was a success, the rest of a series of books might have a chance to do well too.

I hope this helps and I also hope that I'll someday get a chance to read the new version and that it's broken down into smaller pieces when I do.

As the king of making myself misunderstood and unintentionally offending people, I apologize for both in advance.

Keep smiling;
ssalo

Elsewhere in the news: JT= Don Imus????????

 

Response to Ssalo, and another excerpt.

Do not sell yourself short. Your opinions are to be coveted by those few among us who understand that you are a reader! We writers all too often digress so deeply into shop-talk that we lose sight of what really matters: the audience. I would not go so far as to say that your opinions are most valued, but they are certainly high on the charts! So don't ever stop!

The "clean" version of the first book, Nascent, is too long. Would chopping it up help? The jury is out. I think not. I have tried it. I have split it into smaller books. What I have found is that splitting it up, paradoxically, works only for those who have read the entire book, are privy to the trilogy's larger themes, and know how Nascent ends.

Even in the "clean" version, there is a plot climax of sorts, halfway through, where Nelson and Jessica "go all the way" and declare themselves to be irrevocably in love. That is a logical place to split the book, without unraveling the plot in clumsy ways, and it has been tried. The "declaration" scene is sweet, but at that point it is still just a love story. What makes their relationship special is not the romance, per se, but the fact that they die for each other and are reborn in the avalanche scene, toward the end of the book. People who have read the avalanche scene - especially the "clean" version - can anticipate it, and the romance means more to them.

The essential problem is that Nascent has too many interwoven stories. One reviewer on another website called the book a tapestry, woven on a loom by a master weaver. Those words were flattering to A.P., believe me. But his essential point - and I agree with him - is that if one unravels the evolution of Dymetrix Corporation, and the romance, and Jessica's "discovery" as a math prodigy, and the "furniture program," and compartmentalizes all of those subthemes into separate books, the impact is lost. The themes work well in context, but are much weaker in isolation.

As for SSalo's urging that some things be preserved: absolutely! There is still an age disparity, which the protagonists must overcome (although Jessica is a bit older in the clean version - in fact as old as I can plausibly make her). There is still the "cinderella" aspect of Jessica's humble beginnings and discovery. There is even the "deathwish" undercurrent, which culminates with the avalanche scene toward the end - which appears to work, despite the fact that just about all of the sex and crass goth filth has been stripped from the book.

Here is an excerpt from the clean version of Nascent. This is a scene that appeared in the early 2009 first draft, but which was deemed too slow and lame. It was replaced with filth. Now it is back, in the original form, with some cleanup. Let me know what you think. No sex. Pure romance.


____________________________
An excerpt from Nascent (clean version).Romance. No sex. Nelson and Jessica have embarked on an outing north, and have been driving all morning.


Late in the morning, Nelson and Jessica reached his family's own mountain, and drove a few miles up a narrow private road before emerging on a cobblestone clearing in front of a glass and redwood house that just seemed to ramble on forever, hugging the contour of the land. They parked in a garage that had room for six cars, where he quietly muttered, "No one else here yet," leading her to wonder how many other guests they should be expecting.

He showed her to a bathroom while he rummaged through boxes of spare outdoor clothes. By the time she returned, he had assembled a full Gore-Tex outfit, complete with wool socks, hiking boots, and better gloves than her mittens, which he had her stow in the pockets in case the weather turned. He himself rapidly packed picnic provisions into a large backpack, and they set out on a narrow rocky trail.

They explored the woods, where Nelson identified hundreds of different trees and plants on request; they rock-hopped across streams; they visited old crags and wedged themselves in granite crevices so tightly as to render themselves nearly inextricable, and climbed rickety wooden ladders to visit tree forts that seemed to be in various levels of use and disuse (he explained that his younger cousins had taken over the upkeep and were not very good at it), and all of these wanderings transpired under the omnipresent backdrop of the snowcapped mountain range beyond. They walked for miles. Jessica stopped to examine plants and mushrooms and trees and stumps all along the way. They built a dam in one of the streams. Jessica constructed a boat from leaves and sticks, which she floated down the stream and all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

They stopped for lunch at a pond, near a fallen tree, and he set up the picnic on a large flat rock. The pond afforded them a perfect view of the mountains, a high horizon of red and gold. The sun gleamed like confectionary sugar upon the most distant and highest peaks. The landscape looked to Jessica like a scene out of a fairytale.

She sat on his crosslegged lap, and he held her, and together they looked out across the pond. They wanted it never to end.

"I am sorry I'm so clingy and possessive, Nelson."

"You are not," he assured her, "or no more than I am. And to the extent that you are, you have every right to be. I am yours."

"You keep saying that," she told him.

"Because it is true. And just to reassure you on another point— I don't want this ever to end, either, and the conundrum is giving me nightmares. But I am working on it, I swear."

She clutched his arms, pulled them tightly around her, and said, "I know you are, love."

They watched ripples on the pond. Clouds passed overhead. Shadows raced upon the choppy water.

She said, "All my life I have not hoped for anything. I am trying not to hope now. Because if there is an after, I will have to survive that, somehow. I am trying to memorize everything, every moment. My eyes hurt, because I don't want to blink. I don't want to miss anything. Nelson, I may never be back here again."

"You will if I can help it."

She snuggled into him, and kissed his neck, and said, "That is not what I mean. Back in the car, when we stopped, I meant it when I said that I trust you. I do. I know that you love me, with one hundred percent certitude, and I know that you would have me back a thousand-fold if it were entirely in your power. But this isn't all in your ability to control. I may be young, but I am smart enough to be terrified by the myriad ways that this can go all wrong. So I believe you when you say you would take me back here again, if you could. But that doesn't matter. We could be forced apart tomorrow. Forced apart forever."

He simply repeated what he had said before, kissing the top of her head, replying, "Love, not if I can help it."

She hugged him tighter. "Nelson, my mother seemed to think I would be meeting people here, and in the garage you said, 'no one here yet.' As far as I can discern, there is no one else around for as far as the eye can see. So what gives?"

He chuckled and said, "The estate will be receiving visitors in a couple hours or so. Family, mostly. If that makes you uncomfortable, have no worries. This mountain is plenty big enough that we won't ever have to see them."

She laughed softly and said, "Whereas you just adored my family. Sir, do you really want me to meet them? I mean, knowing as we do on a sensible level that I am too young for you? I can hardly pass myself off as your math student. Maybe you have volunteered for the Big Brother/Big Sister program or something...."

"Jess, we don't have to meet anyone if you would rather not. But I would like to introduce you to my family, that is, you, yourself, with no subterfuge. It is... ahh, part of the reason why you are here."

"Well, umm, family as in who? I know you don't have brothers and sisters...."

"Jessica, I want to introduce you to my parents."

She twisted around, visibly alarmed.

"And you are neither my pupil nor my inner city big brother project. You are the woman I love, nothing more and nothing less."

"But what is your Mom going to say—"

"My mother already knows a lot about you. We talked for two hours last Sunday. And for your information, she is delighted by the fact that you are young. She views our one little problem positively, in terms of your innocence and purity. See, Jess, your fears are my fears, too. This could be the last time you are ever up here with me. Of course I know that. But I don't want that outcome any more than you do. This way, by meeting my family today, we cut to the chase and end the agony. Either this relationship cannot possibly work out, or it can. And your meeting my family will enable the both of us to find out which way it is going to go, once and for all."

Jessica whispered, "When my family play the Numbers Game, this is called, 'going all in.'"

"Indeed."

She turned on his lap, gazed out at the otherworldly panorama, and expelled a long, melancholy sigh. "My love, I have been saying all morning that I trust you. Here is the proof. I will trust you in this. If you want me to meet your mother and father, I will meet them. Besides, it is only fair; I owe you, for having subjected you to my family. So what now?"

"Well, we have a long walk back. If we start now, and take the scenic route, we are likely to find them there by the time we return."

Jessica looked up, and tracked a pair of redtail hawks on their trajectory over the pond and toward the snowcaps beyond. She sighed again, shuddered, and whispered, without looking at him, "You are the most beautiful sight in my world, dearest. But this place certainly comes close."

He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and mused, "This outing suits you, then."

Jessica rolled her eyes and pulled his arms tighter around herself. "I am certain that this is my favorite place on earth."

"Good, because it is mine, as well."

She inclined her head. He bent down and kissed her neck, from her collarbone to her jawline. Her photographic memory worked frantically, propelled by her desperation to remember absolutely everything, driven by certitude that the damned are invariably afforded one glimpse of heaven for all eternity, for purposes of amplifying their everlasting perdition. Tomorrow, should her own penurious existence reclaim her with finality, she would take this beauty to hell, and forever burn gladly.

"We should be getting back to the house, shouldn't we?"

He nodded, saying, "It would be a good idea to start out."

She said, with far more obstinacy than conviction, "I will be back here again, with you. I am sure of it."

___________


They walked slowly, and held hands.

Nelson made every effort to assist her in procrastination. He led her off the trail, through a birch-shrouded meadow of knee-high ferns, to an enormous granite boulder that had been sheared into a fifty foot cliff by glaciers on the last ice age. Since the cataclysm, aqua and verdigris lichens had taken up residence and carpeted every face and crack, apart from fractured beds of translucent quartz crystals that emerged like fingers to catch the sun.

Jessica slowly swept her palm across the scaly dry lichens, which felt rough and abrasive as compared to the smooth faces of the quartz. Nelson crouched nearby, at the edge of a narrow brook, and picked among the stones. She turned and watched him for awhile, fascinated by his apparent absorption with his mercurial game.

He, too, had much on his mind. Perhaps too much.

Jessica grinned deviously, and stealthily crept up behind him. Nelson pretended not to hear. She leapt onto his back, and attacked his neck. His laughter agitated the stream into rippling froth, and echoed off the boulder behind them. He stood up; Jessica clung to him for dear life; he raised her up into the sky. He spun a pirouette, and she threw her head back, dizzy with glee.

They collapsed onto the ferns, and she scrabbled up onto his chest, the better to nuzzle his neck and cheeks. Their eyes almost touched. The ferns settled above them like shrouds, dappling them in lenticular shadows.

She whispered, "I do not hope. Or well, I try not to hope. But I do dream; I dream quite a lot."

"Are you referring to the nocturnal sort, or the daydreaming variety?"

She replied, "Not the dreams that occur at night. Although lately those are perhaps the best of all, because they all have you in them. And for me the nocturnal incarnation and the daydreams that plague the indigent during wakefulness have become much the same thing, since I can pick and choose my dreams...."

"You can what?"

She became instantly wary. She had unwittingly betrayed another freakish talent, like her ability to do long division in her head, and her ability to visualize puzzles superdimensionally, the strange faculties that always drew stares from her teachers, and she realized instantly that she had never told this to anyone, before that very moment, her secret talent for controlling her entertainments whilst asleep. "Umm, I can choose my dreams. And change them, to some extent, like painting. Once having composed a dream, I can recall it at will, night after night. As you can well imagine, you have featured prominently in my nocturnal pursuits as of late. As you well know, I am... kind of nerdy that way."

"You are not nerdy. And don't be ashamed of your gifts. You should be proud of them."

She took a deep breath, smiled with relief, and kissed his hand, declaring, "I will be, for you, Sir. But I understand your question, and I am presently referring to the daydreaming-during-wakefulness kind; as for that variety, you should know that I am having a harder and harder time keeping them interesting."

"Oh, Miss? Why is that?"

"Because most of the things that women my age daydream about, that is, daydreams concerning guys— or in your case, men— have already happened to me. Girls dream about being swept away by someone handsome and strong and mature, someone to save them from dragons (or in my case from an awful neighborhood and a puerile extended family), and then of course we daydream incessantly about sexual encounters, but having a pathetic dearth of practical experience, those dreams inevitably fail to satisfy, and hence our proclivity for placing ourselves in moral and sometimes even mortal peril. For example: until quite recently, my daydreams often involved my being ravished, and subsequently emancipated by a noble protector, and the details were always rather murky. Now, after having made love with you, those idle fantasies just don't compare. Everything with you has been so beautiful, Nelson. These past few weeks have eclipsed the daydreams of my adolescence to the point where I respond to them with indifference at best, and resentment at worst."

"Are you daydreaming now?"

"Sure, in the background. I am daydreaming that this day never ends, or at least, that if it must, that it ends with us together."

And having made that admission, she found it necessary to hide her face, which she did by burying her eyes behind his ear.

"I am doing everything in my power, honey."

Jessica whispered, "I know. But come what may, when this day is over you are going to have to take me home. I wish you didn't have to. I wish I could stay with you."

"I wish that, too."

"Nelson, I mean, from now on."

"Likewise."

"Really?"

"Really. I dream that we are together as a married couple."

She looked up at him and whispered, "Married?"

"Yes. It is impossible, of course. But it is my favorite dream. I dream it every night. I fall asleep dreaming it, and wake up, each morning, still dreaming it."

"You would really marry me, and be my husband, if you could?"

He replied, "Without hesitation, if I could, and if you would have me, I would be your husband. If I thought I could get away with it, I would already have proposed to you."

Jessica abruptly picked herself up off of him, sat upon the damp ground, chest-high in ferns, and watched the stream. She struggled to control her respiration. Her deepest wishes, her accursed hopes, her most verboten desires, rushed up over her head like a fast and quickening river, and would surely drown her at any moment.

She heard him sit up as well, but he made no effort to approach, being no doubt wary.

He reproachfully, bitterly hissed, "I have ruined things again. For the second Saturday in a row."

Jessica shook her head; tears pattered in fine droplets.

"Yes, I have."

"No, my love. No."

"I have scared you."

"No."

"Then what, dearest? Please, Jessica. Please tell me."

"Hope," she explained, "nothing more than that. Your words have awoken hope. Intense and desperate hope, buried so deeply that I had denied the existence of it."

"I am sorry."

She flung herself through the ferns, wrapped herself around his chest, and fervently whispered, "Do not apologize. Do not be sorry. Your words are torture. But I shall take them. Gladly, Nelson. In both arms, I shall take them. I shall take this unbearable agony, and embrace it gratefully, and relive this moment to my last dying breath."

 

Argh!! thats f'ing it!
I'm not allowing anonymous voting anymore if you wanna tear me apart your going to have to show your face to do it!
Its like throwing your soul into a goddamn sharktank... with cowardly sharks that won't even show their faces.

Sorry all had to vent that out. I apologize for the melodrama... "soul in a sharktank"... honestly I ask you.

ah well I was trying something new obviously it failed to be successful. however once again without feedback as to why it gets blasted. its frustrating.

ok all vented now... as you were

 

Oh Writing is like every other art sometimes the Audience throws flowers other times it's rotten fruit, and here on XNXX I have found that if you play to the audience sometimes you get good reviews but never count on them.

 

true enough but so many writers here have had the "straw that broke the camel's back" moment and have altered their writing because of it.
Miss E and DC have, WSF quit leaving comments Don stopped all together. I just had my own moment.

 

Oh I had a few comments that I thought were Unwarranted, And a few ratings that I thought were unwarranted but All in all I would say that I do better than average. I Think the point is you will have some people who will read your work because they like it and either will vote or won't... But they are still out there, as to weather or not the ratings make or break a story... I would say no.

 

sorry I kinda spoke wrongly there I didn't mean to say that the other writers changed their writing style only their posting style. which is what I'm going to do in the future

I understand your point. I just want to sift out the anonymous tomato throwers. if I can put a name to them they become humanized and I can deal with that better.

 

Red I really don't see your complaint your ratings are above board well except for that one story and we all have at least one story that didn't get rated very well. Comments, Hmm... you should read some of the comments and the all out Brawls that have erupted on the comments pages on some of my stories... those always make me feel better.

 

By the way, anyone wishing to read (again and again) the un-sullied works of Samuel Clemens without all the politically correctness injected; try www.gutenberg.org. You'll need to read the books from your computer or majic reader device, but at least what you get is what he meant for you to get.

Comments were not accepted on his books, either.

 

This shit again.

I hate it when I see someone get blasted by trolls. Stupid fucks.

For cryin' out loud, people. Don't expect to like everything you read! You shouldn't -- it would be incredibly boring to live in a world where everyone liked the same thing. We would lose all creativity.

You know what it is? These douchebags were probably the kids who got chosen last in pick-up games on the playground. Hell, some of them are probably not much older than that. They've learned to never expect recognition, success, or popularity, and it pisses them off when they see it.

There's nothing you can do about vermin like that. It's like living in a city. You just have to try to ignore some things.

Now, if only I could take my own advice. GRRR!

 

What I hate is when the trolls will either comment or down vote part 5 or 8 or 12... Shit if you didn't like part 1 why the fuck are you continuing to read the series? I'll only down vote something if its completely incoherent, I will comment if they need serious work...But I try and keep my comments positive.

 

To colleen turner

I wish to say that I have, in the past, read the "dirty" versions of the book and I would love to see the book reappear in any form, dirty or not.

I began reading this site near the end of a.p's appearances so I am unsure exactly why he/she left and I have to say that I was shocked by two things.

1. I did not find your "dirty" books offensive or vulgar (this assumption was not an attack at a.p as a writer, just some of the tags!) but rather the romance between two such people and the apparent devolution of Greta westford had me hooked because of the challenges, trials and tribulations that society, family and/or law (depending where you live of course) put upon the characters themeselves. I was amased, amused and tearful at certain points over the brilliance, beauty and yes the vulgarity (at times) of the writing.

2. I don't know why a.p left but he/she MUST come back because quite simply they can write and write well. Most of the writers on this site (and I do not mean this harshly) cannot.

I understand that there may not be anymore "dirty" versions in existance but I would love to see either (preferably both) versions so that I can finally see how the story ends.

It was a great loss when a.p. left

please return.

p.s. Other writers that i think highly of (for the record) to name but a few are Eros, Daddycums, avatrek and Eric the Red


Greenchild.