The Good Cops

Now that her husband, Earl Osterhaus, was gone out to his monthly meeting with the thirty or so other men who made up the local Anti-Goodness Neighborhood League, or A.G.N.L., an international neighbourhood watch organization that everyone referred to as the “ANGELs,” Theresa could finally get out of the suburbs and into the city. She had two full hours, in and out. Two precious sets of sixty minutes, enough time to get her stuff together and slip out, see Mickey for a quick sec, then slide back in and have the kettle on and ready for when Earl got back home. Earl sure loved his Earl Grey tea.

Just in case anyone was watching Theresa waited ten full minutes putting the dishes away and cleaning the counter tops. Good wife behaviour. Besides, Earl probably had the bitch next store following her every move or for that matter he could even have old man Pierce on the ANGELs’s payroll taking snapshots of her and Science knows who else with his telephoto lens. When she thought it was safe she walked calmly to the front porch where she checked her make-up in the mirror, tucked her purse up under her arm and headed out into the starlight night.

Outside, with the porch light beaming down on her, Theresa felt vulnerable to her neighbours’s prying eyes. She almost gave up on the whole ordeal; Mickey could wait another couple of months. Earl would head out again. But it couldn’t wait. Too much planning and carefully laid hints and suggestions were enacted now and she felt swept along with the linguistic loops she had spun. She glanced to the left, up over the row of hedges and azaleas and down the street. Everything seemed fine, a typical moonlit night in the ‘burbs. She gave the door knob a few quick jerks, glanced to the right and everything appeared normal there too, then gave the handle a final tug. Perfect. The door was unlocked.

Theresa darkened at the thought. She headed down the interlocking brick pathway to her new navy blue Dodge Torrento her hands digging around in her purse for the keys. If they can take away our locks then. But she couldn’t finish the thought; the keys rattling just beyond her searching fingertips. But we got used to it,she sighed then recovered with a quick, whip thin smile coated in strawberry flavoured lip gloss. Minnie Mason. Resident bitch sitting in her living room, smiling and waving. It made Theresa think of an autopsy, the way everything dangled and sagged in the TVs soft blue glow, and how Minnie’s new WAV TrackLight bathed her and the rest of the living room in a tantric uterus of warmth and protection; how the new track lights painted the glass walls in an undulating ocean of blues and yellows and reds and greens, all digital and dancing, to relax and rejuvenate the hard working soul. Theresa oozed at the memory of the WAV TrackLight 3000’s new TV ad. Retailing for six grand at any Wal-Mart store where they offer the amazing “this month only” deal to meet and beat any prices on the market, all you have to do is bring the advertisement to the manager of the media section and he will take care of all your needs, a sweet, sweet deal for a sweet, sweet machine which just now hit off of the shiny new glass coffee table that sat at eye level with Minnie’s skinny knees.

She shoved the keys in the ignition and cast a last glance at Minnie in order to read her face. But there was nothing there. There never was. Theresa hated Minnie’s high strung ways, her jitterbug footsteps and slightly hobnobbed roll, and her tightly wound jet black curls; her high pitched voice like a blend of pharmaceuticals, coffee, cigarettes, colas, Snickers bars. Shrill things. And she was willing to use it—that awful squeaky voice—and call the ANGELs at the slightest provocation, a word, for some reason, which Minnie always pronounced in a poorly affected southern drawl. Prov-o-ca-shun. But try as she might, she had to admit, Minnie’s new furniture really did bring the room together. She heaved a sigh and waved back. It was perfect. She had to admit it: the living room was perfect.

Like Earl just fifteen minutes before her, she rolled the car out of the driveway but unlike Earl just fifteen minutes ago, she headed in the opposite direction angling her car through the rows upon rows of glass cookie-cutter houses with basketball nets hanging off of the garage roofs, chalk hopscotch boards drawn into the street, rusty hockey nets and tricycles abandoned on the manicured front lawns, towards the city.

She shot a look in the rear view mirror and at the glass houses all around her hoping that no one was taking too much note of her late night sojourn. People were watching. “But that’s just the point, isn’t it?” she mumbled aloud. “To police ourselves.” She reached down and adjusted the radio and kept it on KEYP fm. Bowie was on.

She drifted through the streets never going more that a lawful 50/mph. She felt as though a finger were pointing at her back, maybe Eve Driscoll’s or Jay Manzione and she knew without doubt, that the finger bone was connected to the arm bone and the arm bone was connected to the shoulder bone, on up to the headbone and it was from there, she knew, that the questions and comments would follow.

Her alibi was tight, though. Elba and Ezra were easy to fool and besides that they were trustworthy anyway, if you told them the moon had a hollow center and was in fact already a NASA outpost then they would believe it and tell everyone just what you told them; at least she hoped. Mickey. Mickey could mess anything up, but he was scared too shitless to do anything anyway. Mickey knew Earl would kill him if he found out about this and, she reasoned, there was a pretty good chance Mickey would kill her for putting him in this situation in the first place. Mickey didn’t like surprises, who did, but what could she do? There was no way of contacting him. Not unless she took risks. The Torrento drifted through the rows of glass houses, Minnie behind the wheel, her eyes glazed over by the houses’s shimmer and twinkle and the electronic colorspray of the WAVs her thoughts drifting back to when she was just thirteen years old when the New Laws Era began. Thirteen. A little girl. She shifted in her seat. Remembering the first night the laws went into effect, how she tried to hide between her bunk bed and desk and couldn’t help but look out the walls of her room and feel ashamed. All those people in their homes looking at her, looking at each other, looking over their shoulders and cowering in the corners. So many changes. The doors unlocked. The curfew. The watch organizations. The murders. The gangs. Even the edict forbidding the throwing of stones. Stuff like that.

With the glass walls came safety. They argued. The old walls with their gyproc and nails and layers of paint and musty old wall paper, all that they argued, chopped our world into tiny bits so that we only digested reality one little box at a time. It limited our minds, they told us. Made us think in tiny boxes. It was madness after all to cut things up into tiny pieces. We label mass murders “schizophrenic” or “psychopathic” for doing the same thing to the bodies of their innocent victims and then we fry’em in the chair. Walls, they said, they put the very same cuts as the psychopath in his victim as a wall does into the space around us, put cuts into our minds, cuts in the way we think and organize socially. Walls made a mad place. And schizophrenics of us all.

But glass walls would end all of that. Blow the roof right off’er. Open’er wide up. They had the tests to prove it. Something she saw on CNN but was too young to understand. Something about the behaviour of mice, then rats, then pigs, then something else and how their behaviour imporoved. Or something like that.

They promised us everything would be different. And it is.

Everything would be better, they said. Well, better, as they proved, is a very shaky thing.

To be truthful though, there were many nights when she and Earl sat around the kitchen table discussing Bobbie Evans’s habit of going up to the sock drawer in the master bedroom whenever his wife, Doreen, was out. It was a source of mystery and communication, two elements central to a good relationship and she wondered if Law One was introduced in ordered to actually strengthen domestic bonds. How many hours did they spend having a bottle of wine and discussing the fact that Abraham Edmonds liked to actually do his taxes in his underwear?

But what do they say about me?

She coasted down the street careful to drive not too fast, not too slow. Fifty. Nothing suspicious. Stay just right of the yellow line and you’ll be fine, she reminded herself, just follow the plan. And she heard her self explaining to Earl earlier in the day, in her chirpy sing-songy voice that she was going to prepare a rigatoni and get at her scrap book, editing and designing pages about her paperweight collection.

Yes, she could see them and they could see her. But that was the point, right?

Police ourselves.

Theresa  rolled up to the electropulsed gate. From her purse she pulled out Elba’s District Time Card or DTC and smiled at the memory of her children calling it the Destiny card, and she slid it into the slot. There was no time now for her to worry about Penny and Reil. She took back the card and thanked Science for small favours. Elba would loose time on her card, but Theresa had promised to make it up to her with a soup and salad at Prestos and Elba was delighted with that. The gates swung open. Theresa nudged the Torrento out to the curb then hit the gas hoping to make up for the time she lost crawling through the suburbs.

The night sky was a spreadsheet of astronomical calculations and Theresa couldn’t help but think of chance and calculus and how good her chances really where. Well, so far, so good. There was Minnie, of course, Minnie and her god-damned TrackStar 3000. Theresa had to hope that she would keep silent.

No, questions and comments would follow and she made a mental note to stop by Minnie’s when she got back home.

Lunch with Cocaine Stain–4

Fear, cold and substantial, sloshed through my bone marrow and a smile as limp as licorice spread over my face as the waiter placed the food in front of me. Everyone dug in. I took a few sips of my soup but could only choke down a couple of spoonfuls because the soup’s alien texture slipped down my throat in thick lumps that made me think of green cow snot, so I gave up. I turned to the duck salad but it felt like I was eating raw intestines and Gortex. I ran my fork through the salad pushing the green peppers under the lettuce, the arugula I layered over the sprouts. Sudden visions of Hiroshima and a documentary I saw on the Discovery Channel of Ed Gein’s kitchen flashed through my mind. Pools of sweat popped out on my forehead and beveled my upper lip. I chugged back a full glass of wine and tried to shake the horrible images. Then I noticed my family staring at me with their jaws hanging slack, their forks and knives hovering over their food. Everything was poised, a spring trap. 

       “What is it?” I said my blood turning cold. I fingered the half bag of coke in my pocket and a cool wave of comfort tickled my spine. 

      The ice cubes snapped, crackled and popped in Jack’s cup and I let a loud, incoherent “Blurgghll!” as I jumped in my seat.

      The table next to ours turned and stared.

      I wiped my forehead, waiting.

      ”Are you okay?” my mother asked finally. “You don’t look so good.”

      ”Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” I said waving my hand. “Really. I got this ingrown toenail and the sucker is really biting into my skin.” To break the cold wall of silence I ordered two more glasses of Pernod and used the interruption as a way to slid away from the table telling everyone I needed to clean up a little, back in a sec. I wove my way through the tables of people primped up in their Sunday best towards the restroom, which was empty thank fuck, and squinting against the bright white marble walls and the florescent lighting I slammed my way into a bathroom stall and broke up three huge lines.

       And on three:

       One.

       Two.

       Three: Ahhh….

       “You look better,” my mom said. 

       “Yeah, much better,” Frank threw in as he sat back and tossed his napkin on the table, huffing.  

       “Yeah, I feel better, I just needed to splash some water on my face, that’s all. The pain was horrible, but my toe is fine now. I bit that little hangnail bastard right off. And man, this damn heat isn’t helping either.”

      ”Its not the heat,” Frank said pointing a thumb out the window. 

      ”What is that supposed to mean Frank?” 

      ”That it isn’t the weather that is your problem.”

      ”Yes it is. I’m hot. And I got this damn hangnail.”

      ”No, you…what are you saying?”

      ”That I’m hot and feeling a little off.”

      ”Stop it boys,” my mother said. But I was enervated with confrontational coke energy and I turned to my mother and said, “No, no, no. Not this time. This isn’t going to stop until Frank tells me di-rect-ly what the fuck he means. So what is it, Frank? What do you want to say to me, Frankie? Big guy. You want to give me another pearl of wisdom? Another quote from some fossil from our past? Something about ‘If you can’t stand the heat then….”

      ”It’s you I can’t stand,” he said slamming his hand on the table. “Just look at you. You look like shit. Your clothes are not tailored and you in no way match. The ass of your pants is almost worn through for heaven’s sake–-” 

       “That’s it Frank? My fashion offends you?”

       “–-and that horrible excuse of a scent you’re wearing practically ruined my meal; you smell like a damn bum. And your eyes! Jesus Christ, what were you doing last night? Where you with…Pauley?”

       “And what if I was, Frank?”

       From the table next to me I heard the forks and knives clinking on bone china and I shot a look over my shoulder that told them, in no uncertain terms, to fuck right off. I snapped my head back to look at Frank, raising an eyebrow. 

      ”Oh, I dunno. Nothing really I guess, ya know, nothing like a coked up blue head for a friend,” he paused for a breath, squared his cufflinks then added, “It’s only one-thirty in the afternoon and you’ve already slammed back what? Five or six drinks.”

      ”Seven.”

      ”And you haven’t done anything, anything, on the Faber account in months. And that was an easy gig. Jesus. Just tell the truth–you haven’t done a damn thing to help us out. You’re just out to help yourself.”  

       Roar.

       “Oh, so that is what this is all about, is it? Getting credit for the Faber account? Go ahead, then, Frank, take all the credit. What do I care?”

       “Exactly, what do you care about?”

       “What does that matter, Frank? You just want all of the credit…”

       ”Well, as the saying goes: ‘Giving credit where credit is due is….’”

        ”Oh Jesus, Frank. Go to hell.” 

        Frank spun in his seat and faced my father, “This is stupid; a waste of our time. Enough of this trying to be nice crap. Just give it to him.”  

        Silence fell over the table. I looked at my mother but she was gazing out the window and fanning herself. My father was drinking his Perrier. Jack beeped and zapped. 

        ”What? Give me what?” I said looking around the table.

       After a long hard minute my father reached into his grey Lagerfield sports coat and pulled out an envelope which he slid across the table towards me. It had my name on it, embossed in gold.

       I stared at the envelope knowing full well what was inside. I snatched the envelope off off the table. This was it–the reason why we were here. Running my fingers over the surface I wondered if this was the way it works when we die? If there was this long hard silence followed by a big burst of laughter from somewhere off to the side and then some form, some God-thing or whatever, appears and slides an envelope in our direction with our name embossed on it, apologizing for having made such a monumental decision for us?

      ”Yes! Level thirty-six,” Jack said his voice flat and non-committal. Everyone turned to look at him, but Jack didn’t even raise his head to find out what is going on. I couldn’t believe that everyone had forgotten me and this situation so quickly. Jack just kept on playing. Beep, beep. Zap, zap.

      The table next to ours erupted in a torrent of laughter and it cut through my nerves like an iceberg from an Alaskan glacier. I floated the seas alone, charted unknown waters.

      ”It was a tough decision son, but listen, it had to be done.”

      ”Open it,” Frank hissed while admiring his cuff links.

      I ripped open one corner of the envelope but something held me back. I didn’t want this. Not here, not in front of Frank–I couldn’t hand over such a simple victory.

      ”You know what, guys?” I said standing to leave. “I’ll get back to you.”

      As I walked away Frank threw a victorious wink my way, “Naturally.”

Lunch with Cocaine Stain–1

Another lunch with the folks. 12:35, boiling hot with a mild breeze that only pissed me off because it cooled the sweat on my three quarter length black on white Nirvana T-shirt, chilling me. I climbed out of my car, locked it, a quick mechanical thwip, thwip ejecting from my black Volkswagon GTi, as I dragged my ass over the melting parking lot towards the smiling doorman stuffed in a beige suit and top hat. I was late and had absolutely no clear idea as to why I was here. My wobbly mind wondered if it had something to do with the e-mail that was sent to me by an unknown source at 5 o’clock in morning. Entitled “Be Born Again” it contained the following cryptic message: “Naturally, in nature, disasters strike no one who is prepared.” I headed into Prestos my final thought: Here comes another natural fuckin’ disaster.

       The decor was pure Titanic chic and I could practically hear the screams of the damned and the drowning. The walls were covered with large flowers on faded yellow wallpaper, fake gold sconces clung to the walls in fifteen foot intervals, and a thick red carpet with a river of footsteps crushed into its center snaked toward the dining room. Everything was awful; a counterpoint to my neon lit night. The maitre d’ informed me that my party had already been seated and with a wave of his hand he lead me down toward the dining area, “Zis way, zir. Follow me.”

       The carpet’s soft anti-gravity feeling reminded me of last night and buying drinks for girls I didn’t know and snorting lines off the back of toilet seats. I smacked my lips. My mouth tasted like chewed rib bones and dried seaweed, flattened and brown, and I had this sudden feeling that I was going to choke. I wanted to spit or throw up so I stuck my finger in my collar to get some breathing room and forced down the lump in my throat. I knocked my shoulders back and slurped up the sopping wet saliva of polite conversation soaking the ballroom-sized dining room and this steeled my nerves. It was familiar territory and I knew how to use it. And I would. This luncheon would require full concentration and commitment.

       My family was seated at a round table by the window, which worried me. Window seats usually meant something big. Or something bad. My mind flipped through its mental planner searching for birthdays and anniversaries and as usual the pages were dog eared and blank. I switched to “Plan Two” and did a quick mental search of all possible excuses as to why I forgot to bring a card or a gift for whatever it is we are here for and I couldn’t seem to settle on anything and I gave up trying. The maitre d’ pulled out my seat and I sat down, surrounded.

       I tried to break the silence and smiling said, “I got stuck in traffic. Those damn tour buses are taking over the city….”

       “You know” my brother Frank broke in, his finger lifting Ghandi-style, “‘Life is a race, where some succeed, while others are beginning….’”

       “Yeah, Frank.” I said. “Spare me the quote. I know how it ends: ‘Tis better late than never.’”

       Frank leaned back tucking his yellow Saks tie into his blue double breasted pinstripe by Ralph Lauren and then, inhaling a deep breath, he folded his arms across his chest careful not to wrinkle his suit and I knew an attack, gooey and jellyfish-like, was coming my way but before the hammer sparks could fly Frank’s Ericsson bleated out a tinny version of Edvard Greig’s In The Hall of the Mountain King. Without taking his eyes off of me Frank let it ring through the first sixteen bars, smiling. I thought again of the e-mail. Could it have been Frank? He was a prick like that. The ringing stopped. Frank picked up the silver knife from off of his crisply folded white napkin and dug the blade into the white table cloth. He spun the knife idly and watched the triangular prisms of light flash across the table top. A full three minutes of this passed before he sent a quick three word text message reply. Wagner came on again and with a smug smile he excused himself from the table. As he walked away he looked at me over his shoulder and flashed me a grin that said–this ain’t over.

Just Like Bob Dylan Said

“Hey Joe! Watchya doing messing around with that gun? No guns, I said. I done told you to do it just like Bob Dylan said.”

“Whut’s dat, Ang?”

“I said, watch wut yer doin’. We ain’t using guns this time.”

“Wadaya, mean, no guns? We already done the blood on the tracks thing you talked about. Did it with that blond slut last night. Still got’er head in the cooler with the beer.”

Angus spun around and walked up to Joe with his chest puffed out and his chin high and although he only came up to the middle of his chest, Joe was scared. Without taking his eye off of him, Angus removed his red and black hunter’s hat and stuffed it into his back pocket then snorted back a great wad of snot and spat it on the ground. A long silvery string of spit hung from the corner of his bottom lip and he wiped it away with the back of his hand, his sleeve grating against the three day old stubble. Joe eyed Angus like a rabid dog.

“You know hows we gonna do this,” Angus said staring up at him. “We gonna do it Emmett Till.” Angus’s heavy lidded eyes gave him a calm look, but Joe knew better. He had been runnin’ with Angus for two years now and knew his ways, ways which were getting real strange lately. “I explained it to you the whole god damned way here. We gonna do it like that song we like, that Emmett Till song.”

“I know the song, Angus, the melody like, and I can hum along and stuff, but I ain’t never know what that mumbin’ motherfucker ever was sayin’.”

Angus swung his fist and struck Joe across the face. A thin stream of blood ran out of his nose. In the split second that Joe used to recoil, Angus was on him. He stuck out his sturdy little bowed leg and with a handful of hair from the scruff of his neck, he slammed Joe to the ground, jumped on him and squeezed his throat. He leaned forward and calmly whispered in his ear, ”Take it back, Joe. And then we can finish this thing.” As he said this, he cast a look towards the corner of the barn.

“I–I’m sorry Angus. He ain’t no motherfucker.”

“That’s not what I’m on about, Joe. Now say yer sorry or I’m gonna fuck you up.”

“Bu-but, what did I say, Angus? I don’t know what I done.”

They both stopped and looked as a moan drifted up from the corner.

“Shut the fuck up!” Angus screamed and the corner fell silent. He brushed back Joe’s hair and grabbed his face in his rough rope-like hands. “Now take it back.”

”But–-”

“No fuckin’ buts, Joe.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

“For whut?”

Joe’s eyes rolled in their sockets and looked up at Angus. He saw mostly yellowed, nicotine stained teeth.

“Whut?” He repeated.

“For–-”

“–-For being a sorry ass muther fucker, Joe? No that ain’t it, Joe. That ain’t it at all you stupid shit.” Angus slammed his head into the ground. Joe hissed in pain. “Whut yous apologizing for is saying that the man ‘mumbles,’ dumb ass. E’rybody knows Dylan ain’t a mumbler, Joe. It’s his style, you dumb shit, like you’d know anything ’bout that.”

Angus shoved Joetothe ground and snatched the gun out of Joe’s limp hand and was back on his feet, heading through the pool of blood towards their Bronco. Joe felt tired; wanted to lay there all night just looking at the pretty little red tracks that Angus’s boots had made in the barn’s dusty floor, but he knew better and dragged himself up. Pissed off, he shot a look at the corner and growled, “You gonna pay, mister.”

Angus returned with a crowbar, two flares, and duct tape. “Damn near Jesus slipped out there, Joe, with the blood on me boots and all,” he chuckled. He tossed Joe the duct tape. “‘Bout to rain too, I reckon.”

Angus slid over to the corner. He stood with his legs spread wide apart and stared down at the mess of a human slumped and gagged there. It was their Emmett Till.

Another groan seeped out of the corner.

“Now, we gonna do this. This here little, Emmett Till. Come ‘ere Emmett Till, you dirty lil’ nigger.”

Angus grabbed the mess by the back of the neck and dragged his limp body down to a trough near the large red and white barn door. The first drops of rain splattered on the floor and snuck into the barn mixing with the blood. He looked over at Joe and with a twitch of his head he waved him over. “You see,” he lectured. “In The Murder of Emmett Till Bob offers an exquisite number in which he tries to redefine the folk tradition and the whole myth of lynchings and ol’ Mr. Till hisself, taking care to add a little fear into the Delta. Tryin’ to make the killin’ of a nigger, a bad thing. Now Bob is a good guy, knows what he knows, but killin’ a black man, and a black farm owner, that ain’t so bad. Like Bob says, ‘this shit still carries on,’ right Joe?”

Joe ripped an arms length of duct tape and wrapped it around the old man’s legs, then yanked off another piece of about the same length and bound his hands.

Another groan.

“You see, Joe, I’m just trying to make this great land of ours a better place to live. That’s what Bob says to do and that’s whut I intend to do.”

Joe, the bigger of the two, roped the man up and tossed the slack end up over the rafter and leaning into it he dragged the old man up until hung there, his boots just touching the ground.

Angus grabbed the crowbar and set to work. As always, Joe watched and smoked a cigarette and waited while Angus “fooled around a lil’ bit.” It was the same thing he did for The Lonesome Murder of Hattie Carrol gig. Angus let the old man struggle with the rope around his neck, his boots slipping and sliding in his own blood, trying not to choke. Angus loved to see them fight for life. He danced and swayed to some song in his head and watched as the old man fought to stay up, taunting him, slapping him. The old man sighed and seemed about to give up and just before he let his own weight sag into the rope, Angus charged at him and rammed the crowbar into the old man’s chest.

Blood splattered his shirt. And he pried the crowbar deep into his stomach, the guts and intestines making sloshing and squishing noises, the bones grinding louder than his barred teeth, until a rib bone finally popped out of Emmett Till’s chest. Angus snatched the white rib bone and with great heaves of his body he yanked it and twisted it and after five minutes or so it came out of the old man’s chest with a sickening pop. He smashed the old man’s knee cap and wrenched out the patella which he threw in the old man’s face.

Joe finished him off. He didn’t use the gun. Too loud, Angus said, so he squeezed the life out of the man, snapped his neck. That’s how he did it. Always how he did it. That was the part he liked the best, the killing. Then he headed back to the truck and waited. He couldn’t stand it what Angus did next. Joe thought the dead should be left alone. But Angus had to do it his way. Fuckin’ the assholes off of dead was not his thing.

Joe looked around the farm. It was cold. A frost from the North Country hung on everything. The house on the hill was silent and he imagined the whole family up in their rooms tucked under quilted blankets fast asleep. He jumped into the Bronco. The tape deck blared out Shelter from the Storm. The rain fell heavier now and he looked back at the barn, a thin shaft of light cut an outline around the door. A flash a lightening cut through the sky and the barn disappeared for a second. The rain came in great torrents. He wondered what the family’s reaction would be when they found their father mangled in the barn with two flares sticking out of his eye sockets. Angus and his stupid “calling card.”

He looked down at his feet and saw the gun lying there. Lightening flashed again and Angus was walking toward him buckling up his belt and grinning. Angus hopped into the Bronco and rolled it out the long driveway to the I-40 and floored it around the corner, a peel of mud arching up from the back tires as they rushed headlong into the sea of stars that stretched over the horizon like a black ski mask. Rows of wheat fields and the odd silo whispered on by. And as usual Angus was driving and going on about the headlines in the paper and bein’ bandits and all of that. Joe sat there listening.

But this time he was listening to Angus. He was listened to Bob. For the first time he heard what he said.

Bob wasn’t mumbling to him no more. He was comin’ through loud and clear, clear like he imagined them new C.D.s to sound like. And Dylan sang:

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved. Everything up to that point had been left unresolved. Try imaging a place where it’s always safe and warm. ”Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Joe reached down between his legs and picked up the hand gun. Angus babbled on and on about the rush and the blood and he didn’t notice a thing.

Joe leveled the gun and shot Angus in the face and was never heard from again.

Sorry all. I’ve been busy finishing up at work and now I’m off tramping for a few months through South East Asia.

Lunch with Cocaine Stain–3

     ”That’s not like Paul,” my father said, crunching his eyebrows into a steeple. He ran his hand through his black to greying hair, combing it over like a slab of pavement and even though the news was bad, he remained eerily calm. His skin was unseasonably smooth, a fact, he maintained, that was due to his strict diet, Pilates classes, and robust sex life. This last one, my old man’s sex life, was a well known topic in the company and among the richy rich gossip circles. I imagined my father the hero of hen parties. But, whatever. The truth was that the too taut angles and hollow cast of his cheeks gave away the multiple plastic surgeries he had done in high end chop shops in Europe. I started to zone out on his stubble when he snapped up straight in his chair, the steeple crashing. I jumped back into my seat, a little too on edge. He pointed a pistol shaped hand at me and I shot my hands up around my ears in the “I surrender” position, he seemed not to notice and cruised the pistol passed me and pointed it at Frank. “Call Cheevers and tell him Paul’s done. That’s it. Fired. We’ll go with Steve.”

       “Good call” Frank said, banging the table with one hand and pulling out his cell. With lickedy split finger action the text was written and sent. 

       “Steve?” My head swung wildly between my father and Frank. “Come on, man. Steve isn’t half as good as Pauley.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I felt the cold slippery cod slap of guilt, a blow that was both ancient and officious, but, like the cod stocks, dwindling in modern times. Why? I had just left Pauley crashed out on my couch watching The Discovery Channel’s “Inside North Korea” with a whale sized pile of blow in front of him, his teeth grinding down to pebbles. “I mean come on. That’s weird for Pauley. Give him another shot.”

      ”Too late, son. This business waits for no one. You know that. Paul is out. Period.” 

      ”But, Pauley is a good guy…”

      ”Listen. We want good workers, not good guys.” He had that anchorman delivery: a nail gun staccato which hammered everything home as if it was a sturdy unchangeable fact. Butt fuck fags, right? I meant, but fuck facts. Ah. Losing it. 

       “But….”

       “Listen,” he said. “Period.’ Steve is in. Paul is out.”

       “Darling, we’re going with Steve,” my mother said snapping the dragon shut. She plopped a blue veined hand on my wrist and I knew that it was useless to push it any further. She reached over and fixed my younger brother, Jack’s, black hair. Jack didn’t even flinch; he just stared at his Gameboy Advance, bottom lip twitching occasionally, a series of zaps and beeps wafting up from the machine to do his talking for him. 

       “Well then let me deal with it, will ya’?”  

       “Like you dealt with the Faber account?” Frank asks.

       I turned to face him but the sun flashed through the window, blinding me momentarily. I hissed like a vampire and brought up both arms to cover my eyes. I yanked my Blue Blockers out of my inside pocket and shoved them on. “Look, Frank, I told you already, Faber….”

        ”Listen. That is enough of that Faber account crap,” my father interrupted. “The account is in the bag; it’s ancient history now.”  

        Frank nodded along. “That’s right. As Dwight D. said, ‘Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.’”

       “Quite enough,” my mother said punctuating the point. She reached over the table and pulled off my sunglasses placing them next to my wine glass. “Let’s have a toast. To the future.” 

       “The future” dad said raising his glass of Taittinger.

       “The future” Frank said. A wide crocodile grin ate up his face. He didn’t move his head, but I think I saw his eye slither towards me in its socket. “And besides, we got other business to attend to.” 

        I raised my wine, but said nothing about the future. The fucking future? my mind spat. The thought of it made me want to lash out at someone and I turned towards Frank to resume my defense of the Faber account, but my rant was scooped out of my mouth and slapped to the floor as the waiter materialized at my side, pen nib poised on notepad. The sight of him sent a shiver through my body and I repeated to myself: Breath. Try. To. Act. Cool. Without thinking I ordered the wild mushroom consomme garnished with a pate a choux pastry stuffed with morels, chantrelles, and truffles. For my main course I got the gourmet smoked duck salad that my father recommended and which the waiter suggested showcased the fall colors, wherever they had disappeared to in this infernal heat. My father and Frank kept it simple and ordered seared cajun lamb chops with a side dish of fresh steamed vegetables and garlic smashed potatoes with sautéed onions and peppercorn gravy. My mother ordered a Waldorf salad with all organic vegetables and followed this with sushi wrapped avocado and a bowl of jasmine rice. Jack got a cheeseburger and fries, which my mother ordered for him. And a glass of ice cubes, no water, put in an Ice Age II: The Meltdowncup that Jack had brought with him from the Cinema 12. The cup had a cartoon picture of a large but friendly looking Mastodon who was winking and hugging a cocky looking saber toothed tiger. The tiger was giving me a thumbs up. 

       I turned to Jack and asked him in a low whisper how he was doing but he just stared at the on going drama in his lap. I watched him play for a bit thankful that I could duck out of the conversation for a few minutes and try to regain my cool. Jack’s fingers moved in a blur and I was amazed at the smooth execution of jumps and high kicks and the awesome destructive power of secret weapons. There was an endless stream of pitfalls and monsters, but he eluded them all. Nothing touched him. 

      I thought back to Frank’s eerie “other business” comment and wondered if it was some kind of clue. It seemed more and more certain that sent me that damn e-mail. Just the sort of shit he would get up to. I tried to put the pieces together: we were here for something big. A business merger, perhaps? A new five star client? What ever it is, I felt like I have won a big victory and straightened up in my seat. I was cool again.

      The waiter arrived with another round of drinks and Jack’s Ice Age II cup with all ice cubes, no water. Already the heat was melting the ice cubes and little crackles and pops danced out of the cup and mixed with the beeps and zaps. Without looking away from his game Jack reached out and brought the cup to his ear, listening to the cracks and pops. He smiled. Then put the cup back on its coaster and resumed playing his game. My mother stared across the room fanning herself, dragon wings flapping, while my father and Frank were going on about Tiger’s chances at the Masters. 

      And the conversation swirled from golf to business to movie stars and back to business and I guessed this was us enjoying ourselves. I lost the thread again and zoned out on the Ice Age II cup and the large cartoon mastodon giving me a thumbs up and the winking saber tooth tiger and I had this vague thought about the improbability of two such territorial animals being pals. My mind drifted over topics of ice ages and secret weapons and how the world was tourist trapped. I shook these tangle of thoughts from my head and slipped my Blue Blockers back on and gazed out the window. A tour bus pulled up in front of the Jackson Memorial and a crowd of Asians jumped off the bus and huddled around it, reading the plaques, snapping their cameras, and then, within minutes, they were herded back on to the bus by the tour guide and it disappeared down the road burping and farting a trail of black exhaust.

      Our food arrived.

Lunch with Cocaine Stain–2

 ”We’re glad you could make it, honey” my mother said while cooling herself with a handmade fan she bought from a boutique in Hong Kong. It was made of rice paper and adorned with an intricately designed picture of a fiery red dragon coiling its way through wispy trees and bamboo shoots. The fan fluttered in front of my mother moving softly from side to side, back and forth. The dragon flew on the fan. The Oriental themes were too solid and hurt my head. I needed Zen serenity.

      A memory snapped me out of my funk. I recalled the glossy pages of some big name magazine, G.Q. or something, which had proclaimed that the Far East was all the rage. But I was so fucking over it. In fact, I was sick to death of those tour buses taking over the city, turning cultural monuments into cheap pin-up whores; I was fed up with all of those flashing, popping cameras shooting at everything and nothing; and I was pissed off at those goddamned smiles; those wide, too toothy Asian smiles. “Dah-ling,” my mom interrupted my mental rant, “why don’t you be a dear and take off your sunglasses?”

      Cursing my bad luck, I snapped off my Blue Blockers and fumbled them into the inside pocket of my corduroy blazer, worried that my cover was blown. How the hell could I forget to take off my sunglasses? I must be in worse shape than I believed. The Fear grabbed me by the nuts. I whipped the menu up in order to shield my face, hoping to hide the grizzly truth: I was wasted; too fucked up to be anywhere near polite conversation. I slid down into my seat and darted my eyes suspiciously around the table hoping to christ that they were not blazing red and swimming in goo like laboratory fetuses in a pickling jar. No one seemed to notice. Satisfied, I lowered my eyes and returned my mind to my number one concern: the reason as to why we were here.

      Slowly, ever so slowly, I lowered my menu and peeked my eyes over the top. My heart thudded as I scanned the table and noticed that no one brought gifts. No cards either. I tried to think of ways to broach the topic when my father asked about work.

      ”Listen up: Did you get that message I sent you?”

      ”Yeah, that e-mail about nature or something? It was kinda weird.”

      ”No, no email,” he said sipping his Perrier, “a text.”

      ”Oh yeah, that message,” I said taking out my cell phone and noticing that my father’s message for the first time. There were thirteen other unanswered messages. Without reading my father’s text I pressed “Delete All” and then sighed deeply as I felt the carbonated fizz-pop release of stress bubbles bursting and floating away. Ahh….

      ”So what do you think?”

     “Uh…I say…go for it.”

      ”Really. How do you think the board will take it? You know how that shark, Faber, is.”

      ”Yeah, don’t worry,” I said. “I am on it,” but the only thing that I could think of that I was on was a bad diet of pills, powder, and Pernod.

      ”Well then, push it through first thing in the morning.”

      ”I –”

      ”–already took care of it,” Frank said, re-seating himself. “The format is perfect now and I’m just waiting for the final word to come through. I finished it last night and sent it along. Don’t worry I cleaned up the mess.” He let this last word hiss in space as if a whole had been blown in the side of our safe little family space shuttle. Yup. We were a regular Jetson’s space-aged family.

      ”Good job, Frank” my father said.

      I decided to play along, smiling and nodding to lord knows what but agreeing with ardent vigor nonetheless. With this new turn of events the cruise control function in my mind decided to take over and this allowed me to think back through season six of The Discovery Channel’s “Snake Charmers Series.” A list of the various ways that were suggested to kill snakes appeared. Frank was a snake and in this situation I liked my chances with the “Texas Boot Heel.” That was the best method for large poisonous bastards.

      ”I just figured we would take it to’em early,” Frank said. “This way we can break for the back nine just after lunch. Beat the crowd.” He said this with a wink. Can you believe it? A wink.

      ”You sly little codger….” my father said raising his glass of Taittinger in salute.

       “And listen to this,” Frank said leaning forward into the table, his voice low and his eyebrows high. “The network loves the commercial pitch and is going to push it through. Cheevers was pleased. Just one thing though, Paul was late and got short with the director. Story is he was high on something and throwing stuff around. I heard he was on the cocaine.“

The Notebook-5 (Final)

Part 4

Near midnight, with a new mellenium stretching ahead for miles and miles and the snow whipping all around her, a woman named Hilary Thomas leaned onto the wrought iron railing and pulled herself up the stairs to her tiny craft store. A snowdrift the size of a Manhattan tower leaned into the entrance and she shoveled it aside, then grabbed a thick wad of mail out of her mailbox and trundled inside. She shrugged off her coat and tossed it over her chair and sat down to shuffle through the large lump of mail. There were bills, always bills, and a request for a handmade ledger for a wedding, at the bottom of the stack a simple cardboard notebook stared up at her. 

           She turned the leather bound book in her hand. 

           She recognized it. It was an older notebook that she had made sometime in the early nineties when she was working with the German long stitch technique and trying to use recycled products. She opened it and flipped through the pages, which were empty except for one strange word written in a scratchy, nearly desperate handwritting.

           She read the word aloud–-”Botswain”-–unsure of whether to punctuate it as a flat statement or a curious lifting question.

           Then she repeated it–-”Botswain.”

The Notebook–4

Part 3

Brimm sat in his recliner, rocking. The salesman, Steven James, was perched across from him on the mattress’s edge, several bibles stacked between them and the salesman was pointing at them, explaining. The salesman’s black briefcase lay propped up against the door. 

       “This cover is made of a simple, synthetic plastic–it’s just made to look like the real thing, but this one, this one here? This one is made of real Moroccoan leather and it gets better with age, but it will cost ya’ a tidy bundle.”

       “Uh-huh,” Brimm muttered and lit a Player’s Light, studying the salesman. His face was smooth, almost youngish, with a light stubble sandpapering his face, while the light in the salesman’s dark beady eyes stared just up and over Brimm’s shoulder–never directly at him. Brimm watched the man smiling and warbling on about psalms and prayers and the Lord and all the while staring just up over Brimm’s shoulder.

       “Of course,” the salesman pitched, “these ones here are only samples and it will take a few weeks to get’em to you, if you order them that is.” He grabbed a Bible with a Morrocooan cover and opened it to show Brimm the stylized New Times Roman typeface, which he explained, was unique to this series and by all accounts had been well received by the millions of people who have filled out the subscription, which he was presently sliding in front of Brimm. 

       Brimm took the sheet and thought of killing the man. It was a cold blooded thought that slithered in, hissing. I could do it, he reasoned pretending to analyze the form. I could go into the kitchen and grab a knife–just have to tell him I’m making coffee or something. Brimm looked up from the form and watched the salesman’s mouth form words, but they were soundless and unconnected to anything, they drifted towards him in a liquid form and his ears, ill equipped, could not discern a word of it. Besides what difference would it make? I’d be doing that sorry sack of shit a favor. And anyways, he took my story. 

       “So…do you?” the salesman asked smiling, his eyes gazing over and beyond Brimm’s right shoulder. 

        ”Do I what, exactly?” Brimm replied shaking his head.

        ”Hey, come on now,” the salesman asked his eyes darting around the room. “Are you fooling with me? Do you have one here already?” 

        ”Have what?”

         “A Bible.”

        ”No, no I don’t.”

         “Oh, Come on now. There has got to be one here somewhere,” the salesman said and leaned across the mattress to look in the milk carton night table. 

         “I don’t have one,” Brimm said spreading his hands, smiling. I mean, if a guy is wandering the streets at night, he must be alone, no family to miss him. No baboom-boom buddy….

         “I see-ee,” the salesman said curling his lip into the corner of his mouth and exposing a cracked front tooth. It seemed to Brimm to be an uneven thing for a Bible salesman. Probably got it trying to sell this crap. 

         The salesman got up from the mattress and stomped over towards the desk. One of the bibles tipped over and tumbled to the ground. Brimm looked at it and then back to his notebook and recalled the notebook tumbling out of the bookrack back at The Write Tools Stationary Shop. 

          ”I think I need a drink,” Brimm said getting up from his chair. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

          ”Why that’d be great, sir.”

           “Indeed it would,” Brimm said and headed into the kitchen, the salesman droning on behind him about shepherds and their flock. Brimm set about making the coffee mechanically heating the water, opening the cupboard, pulling out a jar of Maxwell House, scooping two lumps of instant into two cups and pouring the hot water glug, glug, glug into the cups which he put on a tray with two slices of bread and the Hienz 57. Next to these he put a large boning knife.

        They sipped coffee together, the salesman seated back on the mattress and Brimm in the recliner. The bread and Heinz 57 stayed on the tray. So did the knife. During the slurping silence Brimm’s eyes kept darting back and forth between the man and the knife, the man and the knife. After a couple of minutes the salesman thanked Brimm for the coffee and walked over to the desk where he picked up Brimm’s notebook, turned it over, and asked Brimm if he wanted to buy the bibles. 

         “I don’t think so,” Brimm replied and picked up the knife. He sliced the bread in two. “Break bread with me?” he asked.

         “No thanks.”

        ”Are you sure?”

        ”Yes, sir. And the bibles?

        ”No thanks. Bread?”

        ”But it can help you with your–”

        ”Its not going to help me with any goddamned problems,” Brimm growled.

        ”But, sir, all problems are God delivered. And we all have our problems,” he said looking around the room and frowning at the filth and squalor. “I mean, look: you are alone on Christmas Day in this dingy apartment–”

        ”So are you, Stephen, so are you.”

       The salesman looked around and shifted from side to side then squared hmself and looked back at Brimm. “Haven’t you heard of Deuteronomy–” 

        ”Fuck Deuteronomy.”

        The boning knife became real then and he fought it back. “Look, you’re wasting your time on me,” Brimm said getting out of his chair and facing the salesman. “I think you should leave now.” 

         “Excuse me, sir?”

         “Leave now,” he said pointing at the door with the boning knife. 

         “But this is the Word of God,” the salesman said his voice high and cracked and his eyebrows low. He picked up a Bible and walked across the room towards the desk. “God speaks to you through this book,” he said leaning on the desk. “

        ”Get. Get out now” he said slowly. 

        The two men stared at each other. The salesman broke the deadlock and Brimm followed the salesman’s eyes as they snuck over to the door with the briefcase leaning on it. The room’s air was stale and sweating and it felt hard for Brimm to breathe. 

         The salesman fidgeted then stood up straight, his chin leaning forward. “You know,” he asked bouncing the notebook in his hand, “that I can’t do that.”

         Brimm stared.

         “I can’t do that, sir. Those who are lost are never a waste of one’s time; but rather the ones who waste it.” He reached out to Brimm, his hand hovering just over the knife. “Let me help you, sire. Let God help you.” 

          Brimm crushed his cigarette on the floor. His teeth bit into each other. “Why were you walking outside last night?”

         “Sorry, sir?” The salesman said looking around the room.  

          ”I asked: why were you walking around the street, spying on me.”

          ”I’m sorry sir. I think you must have the wrong person. I wasn’t spyi–”

          ”I saw you.”

          ”N-no, sir, you’re mistaken. I was at church.” Again the salesman looked at the briefcase leaning onto the door and then back at Thomas Brimm with the knife waving lazily below his bloodshot eyes. Suddenly, Brimm charged at the man toppling the bibles stacked in the middle of the floor, but the salesman was quicker and darted over to the door where he kicked aside the briefcase and grabbed the door handle. He turned back to face Brimm. “Sir, I….”

         “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t!”

         “Sir, I think–”

         Brimm charged again but the salesman scrambled out of the apartment slamming the door behind him. A second later, Brimm yanked the door open and threw the knife down the stairwell where it crashed against the wall and barely missed the salesman as he took the stairs three at a time, practically breaking his neck as he left.

         Brimm returned to his room full of bibles. It was three hours before he noticed that the notebook was missing.

The Recluse–1

The first I heard of Oliver Dent was back in 1979 when news ripped across the headlines that he had died of a sudden cocaine overdose in the penthouse suite of the Chelsea Hotel. The news gripped the city and squeezed it into a stupor, people kicked pebbles and shook their heads as they tried to figure it all out–how could he have done this to himself? Wh?– but no one was able to and this turpor lasted nearly one full year until Oliver Dent’s press agent released a junket which announced that the information was unequivocally false, that the famous director was alive and well and was in fact living a comfortable existence in his 18th century English manor house, enjoying the solitude of country life. I was a young man back then, just thirteen years old, but I was old enough to be intrigued. The Oliver Dent episode expanded my understanding; it connected me to the people around me and the news, junk news, became my world. 

       So it was only natural that I took to writing and photography. I graduated from university and after a few tough years I learned that freelance journalism was a hard and difficult life, the jobs came in slowly and the money dripped in, although I had talent it never rained nor poured, the money always dripped. After a decade or more of near poverty, I gave it up, hung up the lenses and moved on. There were some good times, though. The life of a paparazzi in the nineties was almost glamourous and still very innocent. I had gotten some exclusive photos of Kurt Cobain holed up in some dive on the Sunset Strip and sold these for a pretty penny to The Inquirer, got shots of Tarantino going out the back door of the Viper Room, Johnny Depp jumping into a limo with Kate Moss. But 1997 rolled around and Lady Di and Dodi Fihad were crushed in her car and the glitz and glamour died with her; I could no longer do the chase. I realized this was no line of business for a man with a conscience and so I found something else. 

       Nothing quite matched Oliver Dent’s disappearance for me, though. The questions surrounding his disappearance had a more alien texture than anything else I had dealt with before; it was an oddity, an event that burned deeply into the collective consciousness. The media and celebrities were still innocent back then and I guess I was too. Fast forward twenty years and the hype surrounding celebrities was drowned out and droll. A celebrity’s death is flashed on the screens, singed into our ever depleting memory banks and within days we move on, soak up the car bombs in Iraq with our pizzas and beer, and hang around waiting for the next great death. For me, though, no death was as great as Oliver Dent’s. Although he had lived, he was gone; gone from the public eye, no longer attending functions, or doing interviews, no longer pumping out films that redefined the medium’s landscape. But, he wasn’t gone for me. I followed his bumpy ride through the headlines and then Arts and Entertainment section before it landed in the editorials where it stayed for a couple of weeks before it was pushed to the magazines. Journals followed. Then nothing. 

       Besides, other great things happened that year and they swept Oliver Dent’s story under the rug. Saddam Hussein won the Presidential Election in Iraq and just a few countries West, the Soviet forces invade Afghanistan, a war that would eventually inspire a young Osama Bin Laden to achieve greatness and glory in battle. Sony introduced the Walkman and O.J. Simpson ran for a miraculous 2,000 yards, the first man to do so. 

      Yes, 1979 was a big year. But, Oliver Dent no longer a part of the talk. Where had he gone? It was as if I were the only one who even remembered the man. I felt frustrated by the lack of information and shocked that no one else cared to know. A year passed by the first two and yet another year after that. And in just five years,  Oliver Dent was gone. There were no more films and no more interviews and I began to wonder if I was the only one to even remember the man. Why was no one else interested in his whereabouts? I was freshman then, thin with a bush of curly black hair and hard at work, which was unusual of course. The Dent episode honed a desire in me to get to the bottom of any question. Even if down meant far, far down. So I followed Dent’s story and in 1979 that was easy. Dent was on every newspaper and tabloid cover. I spend my time reading all of the different articles that appeared. But after things simmered down it became harder to keep up with the brilliant man’s life. What happened to the man, I wondered, why was he no longer putting out movies?

        By 1987 it seemed as if I were the only person left on the planet who remembered Oliver Dent. Eight years after it began, I was out of university and trying to sell my stories and photos, chasing around Soho for shots of Elvis Costello or The Talking Heads. I kept three of his movies stored in a box and I watched them over the years admiring Dent’s command of the craft. And it was in the winter of that same year, 1987, that something did surface.

        It was called The Oracle of Origins. Written, produced, and directed by a Manton Jamieson, which, I was sure, was Oliver Dent’s alias. I had my theories and it had to be him. The movie was available only through REMpire Magazine, a British rag that catered to hardcore film fans, and having ordered it waited for it to arrive at my apartment. It came three weeks later and with my hands trembling, I ripped open the package as I rushed up the stairs two steps at a time, crashed on the couch in the living room and watched. 

        There were no credits. Just the title, Oracle of Origins. A grand shot of the universe swept across the darkness, and the camera panned down to the Galaxy. The Milky Way. The Earth and farther on down through the clouds and the mountains, threw a jungle’s canopy all the way down to a bug perched on a leaf, antennae twitching, an alien looking bug unlike anything I’d ever seen before, that took flight, and soared higher and higher through the trees, reaching up into the clear blue sky until it broke through the clouds, going higher into the stratosphere, the blue sky darkening to black night and as the limit of the atmosphere neared, the strange bug’s wings strained and heaved to find an edge on sorely lacking oxygen molecules. The bug’s wings singed, then flared up and disappeared in a heartbeat. It plunged back towards the Earth, crystalizing on the way back down. A fifteen minute montage ensued depicting the metamorphosis. The bug finally emerged from its chrysalis with a new pair of wings and it flew and flew until it tired and landed on a strange new planet. It was attack instantly. Amoebas and parasites fought for the new food. After an hour of this, the movie ended.    

         My questions and concerns multiplied. Why did it take Oliver Dent nine years to put out a two bit sci-fi flick that employed documentary techniques about a bug under attack by a colony of amoebas and parasites on a planet not so far away from our own, a plotless offering that featured no dialogue, no characters, and tons of “action,” if that is what you can call it. Why this oddity? I sat in my T.V.’s blue glow for a full 86 minutes and another hour afterwords, stunned. It was rubbish. Pure wackiness and a slap in the face for those of us who have been waiting. What the hell was he thinking? Oliver Dent was mad, there was no mistaking it. To take nine years and produce this shit? I snatched the tape from the VHS’s mouth and examined it. It was very simple. Oracle of Origins was typed on the top line, beneath this was the name of a small independent company from Ireland named Lamp Light Productions. On the final line was the director’s name Manton Jamieson.