After Dark - 5. Chapter 5

3:17 AM

When I saw what looked like a Flying Spaghetti Monster's silhouette flying across the full moon, that's when I knew Bennet was telling the truth. Even if I blinked ten-thousand more times, it was still there, that wiggly pasta of doom. Then I saw them split off into smaller entities, that spilled over her round face like dripping eyeliner. La Luna, mi amore! How dare they touch you. Those fiends up there must be the Trespassers, Bennet mentioned.

“You see them,” he said.

I nodded, still looking skyward.

“They'll make an appearance in a couple hours. Just keep an ear open for the click beetles. They’re on lookout. What's this place called again? I gotta text them directions”

“Koi Hill. Turtle Pond Place. The Smoke Spot.” I inhaled my cigarette, maybe my tenth that night, and puffed out deeply. “This setting has a lot of names depending on who you ask.” But come morning, this green pastoral place might be completely gone.

“Must spend a lot of time here.”

“It's a chill spot to relax between classes.” I sparked up another one of my American Spirits. “Never really saw this place after dark.”

Bennet was reading my latest story attempt. “You wrote about the pond down there, although you chose to set everything during the day.” Bennet was poring over the pages with arched eyebrows. “'A stranger walks into your life. You're not sure if he's good or bad. You're friends for a while, but how long's that going to last?'” He was reading my words. Pretty cringe-worthy. I'd have to apply major edits later.

“No, I like it,” he said. “With a bit of work you could turn some of this garbage into a masterpiece. If we get through the night, that is.”

“You're reading my thoughts.”

“Finally figured it out.”

I felt myself flush. “I had an idea. But I didn't wanna sound drunk. Part of me wanted to impress you.”

“You're sober now. Keep it that way. It'll help with the writing, trust me. I'm sure by now you realize I'm not your type.”

Porco dio. He knew everything. Why were all the cute one's psychopaths?

3:28 AM

“Man, this is really getting convoluted,” said Bennet. “And you don't even bother to explain all the weird shit happening. You're rushing, man.”

“It's magical realism,” I said. “The characters just roll with the weird fantastic elements as the plot unfolds. The weird elements are all supposed to mirror the inner states of the characters. What's to hate?”

“I've seen fourteen-year old girls do better than this.” He poked his gun into the notebook for emphasis. “Here's a good reason why you don't write the night before a deadline. Give yourself a chance to fail and then give yourself time to pick yourself up.”

“This is what you get when you make me write at gunpoint. What happened to turning garbage into a masterpiece?”

He dragged his cigar to its end. Not sure how he finished without coughing out a lung, but I'm too apathetic to care. “Can I read some of your books?” He'd built them into a leaning tower of paperbacks and pulp-fiction.

“Don't see why not.”

“Swell. I'm gonna read and you're gonna write until your fingers turn to ash and your carpal tunnel develops cancer.”

“Sure, Smalls.”

“Gimme a smoke.”

“Sure.” And so I gave him one of mine. “Why don't you write too?”

He gave me a blank stare. Then he threw his book over his back. “Maybe I will. Then when we're done, you'll show me yours and I'll show you mine?”

“I've already seen yours.”

Bennet gave me his best Steve McQueen grin. “We'll write nonstop for an hour. What time is it?” He craned his neck to see my watch. “Tres y media—en cinco, quatro, tres...”

“Si, si.”

“Dos, uno...”

“Vamos!”

4:17 AM

“Let's stop early and get stoned.” He lit up his pipe and puff-puff-passed it on.

“You barely wrote anything, Smalls.”

“You're the Author, not me. ‘Sides, I'm enjoying this book of yours—Women in Love, by our friend DH-Longwinded-Lawrence.”

“There's a lot of talking in it. Great conversations, but I doubt you'll finish it. DH is a bit crazy.”

“Give me a summary.”

“It's about two sisters who get involved with a pair of closeted best friends who run the local coal mine. The boys and girls pair off and one of the men eventually kills himself in the frigid Alps because he can't connect with his woman, while the other gets told that, 'There can't be two kinds of love,' and gets locked into marriage. It's ho-hum, but pretty edgy for its time.”

“OK I'm over it. You might be the only man alive still reading DH Lawrence.”

That made me feel proud and pretentious. “So what about him?”

“Just making an observation. Do you carry his books around because you're a showoff or do you really admire him as an artist you yourself want to be like?”

“Well, it's a bit of both.”

“What if I told you all those Lawrence novels you've read weren't just a waste of time. There was a purpose for reading them, and that it's led to this very night. Literature really does have a higher power—and it's not just liberal elite propaganda. Personally, I didn't know DH, just heard from the bugs that he was a kind of wanker, but I do know one of his novels is pertinent for what's gonna happen tonight. Have you read The Plumed Serpent?”

“Not yet.”

“You have a copy right here.” He wiggled it.

“When I finished writing, I wanted to get to it eventually.”

“You say that about a lot of things,” said Bennet. “What if I told you this book is a prophesy for the end of the world, and the reason why Lawrence wrote so much was because he was protecting humanity from destruction with the verbosity of his stories alone?”

“Anything can happen, right?”

“Now you're catching on. Stories contain magic in their words.”

I nodded enthusiastically.

“And the greatest magic is subtle and embedded in the words we don't always appreciate.”

“That's what I always thought. So Lawrence has something to do with the Moonfall?”

“You're on fire, Mr. Shinozaki. Very perceptive. Now that Lawrence is gone, you're gonna pick up where he left off.”

“Told you to call me, Dave,” I said, looking up at the big wobbly moon. She had tons of craters close-up and deep lines and ridges and pits. Old girl, we'll lift you back up where you belong, just you wait. Nobody should see you droop so low.

“The moon's an egg,” said Bennet, looking up with me. “Look closely and you can see the embryo stirring inside.”

Examining the porous surface, I concentrated and placed all my faith and belief in what Bennet was saying. I'd always wanted to take my writing to another level, expand my imagination, so maybe this was just the opportunity I needed to open my eyes and reach a whole new consciousness. I needed to really believe anything can happen.

Steam shot from the lunar vents and through cracks opening to the mi amore’s surface. How was combustion even possible without an atmosphere to feed the smoke? Anything can happen. Anything can happen. Anything can happen.

Turn off your inner logic.

At last, I peered through the veil, and beyond the rocky lunar crust and deep into the dark side, where no one ever caught a glimpse. A colossal wyrm slithered and coiled inside the moon's core, the same way you saw a chick if you place an egg up to a flashlight. You could see the wet feathers covered in amniotic fluid. The Plumed Serpent stirred.

“That thing is going to hatch,” I said.

“Only if it falls. Every time the Trespassers tried to bring the moon down in the past, and wake the dragon inside, DH Lawrence wrote a story that thwarted them all. His words were so terrifying and powerful that they sealed the universal dimensions and banished all evil.”

Lawrence was lush, but boy, he could rend spatial rifts with the obnoxiousness of his purple prose? Oh boy.

“What do I write?”

“Write as if you were God. You can be anyone. Go anywhere. And anything can happen. The pen has the Magick of creation and destruction—choose wisely, Dave.”

For a moment I thought about what I wanted to say. Be my own God. Let the pen create. You are the heir of DH Lawrence, so keep on telling yourself that, pumping up your overblown ego: only you could save this good-for-nothing rock with your literary Genius-Art™.

“Let there be light,” I said, then scratched down a sentence. Then a couple more. It was so easy now, as if someone had opened up a deeply buried well inside me and the rush invigorated me with the cool onslaught.

My pen unleashed its fury and wrath on the paper. It was time to speed this plot up a bit. The wind picked up, and for the first time tonight, the shadows started to slink away.

“Here comes the sun,” I said.

Time: 5:50 AM

Word Count: Armageddon Arrives

Something clicked in the meadow. Tap-tap-thud. Tap-tap-thud. I heard the click beetles' alarm.

I stared at the last page I filled in my notebook.

So not everything really rolled together, but this jumbled mess of a story now surpassed ten-thousand words. Bare minimum success, right here, and only ten minutes to spare. Yes, you heard me. Ten minutes to save the world and then hightail it over to the EBA building for submission.

The full moon wobbled over me, but her shadow was retreating.

Bennet looked around, confused, then he threw away his cigarette. The sun rose slowly over the Diablo Mountains. He spun around and scowled. “Dave, what did you do? They're here.”

I raised my head from my finished page with a cheeky smile.“'Suddenly, time sped up and it was ten minutes before sunrise.'”

“Ach, don't say it out loud!”

The sun fast-forwarded into the sky in a steep arc, then planted itself against the moon for the face-off. For the first time in forever, the Moon was bigger in the sky than Senor Sol.

But her shadow was retreating.

Just keep writing, Dave.

“'Then the Author and the Hero steeled themselves for battle.'”

A pot-lid poofed into being above me, when I'd wrote I wanted a shield, and it fell on my head¹. Ouch. Then a metal colander and a spatula spontaneously generated in the air too. I dodged those.

“Your writing isn't quite good enough for the Magick to translate 100% into reality,” said Bennet. He shimmied away from another falling pot.

“You want me to write more like Lawrence?”

“No, no, of course not. We don't need another one of those. Be yourself. Use your own voice and words, just do it better. Don’t worry about being pretentious, because we’ve already established that long ago. More concrete details and less vague language and flowery stylistic choices. More action.” He spread with hands out and wiggled his fingers. “Oh, and watch your punctuation too.”

So I rewrote a few things.

And plop.

A medieval mace fell five feet from the sky and both of us threw ourselves out of its way. .326 seconds later, there was a walloping dent in the bench.

Then I rolled away from a falling arming sword and two kite shields. Crash. Clang. As I caught my breath, a crossbow thumped into the grass. I crawled over and picked it up and grinned seeing Bennet shaking his head while inspecting some of our sky-forged weapons.

“For long range-assault,” I said, holding up my crossbow. It was already loaded with a bodkin-tipped arrow. “I should probably make more ammo.”

“Less thinking about writing,” said Bennet, “and more actual writing. But don't rush. Take time to find the best, most beautiful words. We'll arm ourselves with those.”

Nodding, I took up the pen. “'Bennet the Hero held up his sword in the morning sun.'”

And so he did. Without any resistance from his tight little arm muscles, he held aloft a nice Italian rapier, with a hilt of threaded gold leaves. Of course, he was impressed.

We both turned hearing the click beetles again. Then the sound of wood splintering, followed by loud barks.

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” cried Bennet, and he pointed his sword down the hill. The shining sun rose at our backs.

Outside Scripps cottage, nine white foxes stalked from the shadows of the shade-trees and encircled me and Bennet. They snarled and raised their tails in aggression, snapping their jaws. Here be the Trespassers. Tap-tap-thud. Tap-tap-thud.

My first instinct was to hiss at the foxes, a bad habit when I'mtired, but the blasted canines snapped their jaws back at me. Then lurked closer. I raised my bow.

“Too bad we didn't have any of those back at camp,” said Bennet beside me, now holding a shield, and looking all hot and knight-like. Seems like he forgot that his gun was still stuck in his waistband.

Good.

I steadied my aim.

The nine foxes were within lunging distance.

Their eyes turned white like attacking sharks and they ran full-sprint. Then the foxes miraculously stopped moving while our heroes traded banter.

“Weren't the Trespassers flying spaghetti monsters earlier in the story?” asked Bennet. He gave his rapier a little flourish.

“Last minute revisions,” I answered.

“Feeling foxy now, are we?”

“You know exactly what Daddy's thinking.”

“Please stop referring to yourself as that.” He sighed. “You're making this all up as you go, aren't you?”

“Who cares about inconsistency when you can write anything you want? Besides, I'm the Author, bruh. And we've got a deadline. What I say goes—”

That is, until two of the foxes jumped up and bit my arms, sinking their teeth in, as I yelled, Holy potatoes. My triggerfinger slipped and let loose my bodkin arrow. A third fox died as the shaft pierced through its throat and lodged into its brain. I was able to convey these details whilst foxes Number One and Two chomped at me simultaneously, only because their bite force was terribly weak. Ha! I flapped my arms up and down, wiggling the foxes hanging from my biceps. Their teeth couldn't pierce my Spidey suit.

How's that for plot-armor?

Bennet stabbed at the fox on my left with a swift strike. Then he hopped back and lunged forward for the riposte on the beastie to my right. They dropped dead and would make fine coats when winter ever came.

Our six remaining fox-foes backed up, snarls turning into whimpers, with an understanding in their eyes that they were outmatched. The sun blinded them.

This is what happened when nature tried to oppose humanity. It got fucked.

“Now it's time to wield some of your newfound authorial power,” said Bennet. He was spinning my notebook around in his hand like a pizza. Where'd he get that?

He had opened the notebook to a page full of writing and presented it to me like a platter right before my chin.

“Blow on it,” he said.

“But we only just met.”

“Oy vey. The ink. Blow the ink.”

I chuckled, then with a big-boy breath, I huffed, and I puffed, and I blew the shit out of that notebook.

The pages fluttered and I saw inside, all the words shimmering and glowing with rainbow light like that escaping a prism. First one by one, then in bunches, the words wiggled free off the pages and floated into the air.

Dazzledazzledazzledazzle.

The foxes darted their heads back and forth as the airborne inkscratches flew around, morphing quickly into Magick multicolored moths with big wings. The swarm encircled the evil canines, barking now like bitches. A bunch of disco and technicolor flashes sparked.

“Finish it, Dave.”

Something clicked in the meadow. Tap-tap-thud. Tap-tap-thud. I heard the click beetles' cheers, compelling me to look at the foxes trapped by the really glittery/gay insects of sparkly awesome.

“Finish them!”

Finally, I erupted into a megalomaniac laugh, then I grabbed the arrow from the dead fox, ripping out some brain-guts. I pulled up my left sleeve, then pressed the bodkin into my skin, without applying any antiseptic, then etched onto my wrist, still laughing mind you, the fox's blood into my blood for the final sentence to finish this fucking story.

God I was crazy tired.

5:59 AM

The charred bones of the six Trespassers were still smoldering when Bennett picked up one of the skulls and put it over his hand like a sockpuppet.

He mimed the words with the dead fox, making its jaws snap. “Hey Dave, looks like we did it. That was quite a shocking finish.”

“You're an idiot.”

“You think I'm adorable though.”

“Bennet, let's not be coy, I gotta get this assignment in. Can I go now?”

“You wanna know who else is coy? The Koi fish.” He was still puppeting the skull.

“We need to work on your sense of humor.” I got my bag, and was gonna run for it, but I winced as I took a step. A searing pain shot up my ankle. During the battle I must’ve twisted it and not noticed the injury. Unless of course, I’m retroactively placing this injury into my story. Hmmm.

Bennet squatted. “That leg of yours looks totally beat. Hop on. We’re gonna make that deadline.”

So I got on his back, and he ran across the quad at ostrich-speed.

“For someone so tall, you have no upper body strength,” I said. Watching the clouds go by, and trying not to lick his ear.

“This would be easier if you didn't have a boner pressing against my spine.”

“That is my phone.”

“Whatever, would you stop slipping!”

“Would you lift some weights. I thought you were a marine.”

“And I thought you weighed less.”

“Ass.”

“That is something I know I don't have, you don’t have to rub it in. Hashtag skinny-whiteboy problems.”

“Straight as a board certified. That's why I keep slipping. Gah. Watch the stairs, man!”

***

Well, what else can I say? We made it. And I did it without creaming my pants.

“You think my prof will mind the beerstains and the bloodstains?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my head and shaking off the manuscript. The faculty building was empty so our voices ran down the hallway ahead of us.“He accepts handwritten work. Slip it under already.”

When I stuffed the notebook beneath the doorcrack, I let out a big sigh. “Armageddon averted.”

***

So we went there and back again, just a short prance to Koi Hill. By the turtle pond we lit victory cigarettes while we reflected and threw bits of bread into the water. We saw that the moon had returned to her place in the sky.

Bennet kept looking down at my left arm, at the Spidey sleeve worn through with dried blood. “Will you let me see what you wrote?”

“You'll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“Just something short, simple, and sweet.”

“No kidding. Lemme see.”

I wanted to tell him the words weren't ready for the world, but still surrendered my arm, and I felt my body tingle as he unsheathed the spandex and touched my bare skin. Bennet smiled but then I pulled away.

His brows knit. “Show it to me.”

“Not yet.”

“If you refuse to take the offer I'll take this gun, put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. You wanna be the author, you gotta let the Hero know the ending.”

Right-ho. If that's not manipulation, I don't know what was. “Why are the cute sociopathic ones always drawn to me?”

“Maybe you smell.”

“Well then, shoot me.” I proudly puffed up my chest.

“Don't think I won't.” Bennet reached for his gun. But his confidence formed into a scowl when he discovered his sidearm missing. The slit in his suit was empty.

“You were saying?” I pressed the pilfered Mauser into his belly. “Spiderman doesn’t use a gun you know.”

“Little sneak!”

“Careful kid,” I angled the nozzle downward, and brushed his suit with the pistol. “One wrong move and I’ll change your religion.”

Bennet gulped. “Oy vey. Don’t be hasty, now. Maybe we can make an arrangement.”

“I’ve already made my decision.” The handgun hammer clicked.

“Oh boy. Oh no.”

I looked to the moon, up where she belonged. Using all my might, I threw the pistol down the hill and it splashed into the pond and then I wiped my hands clean. Bennet was ghost white. He let out a sigh of relief.

“I hope no one finds that.”

I slapped my knees. “I accept the position of Author. Now would you please, fill me in? ”

Color slowly returned to Bennet’s face. He shook his head, grinning and laughing. “Well, Dave, glad we could recruit you. It’s simple. So long as you sit here at this spot and write your stories, about anything, no matter how bad they are, as long as each attempt is honest, brave, and an act of self discovery, then that moon won't ever fall.”

“Sounds like a lot of responsibility.”

“Would you rather go back to drinking and depravity? Do you want to see the end of the world as we know it? The Trespassers will come back.”

“I work at the post-office, just so you know.”

“You do have a day-job.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me, Smalls,” I said, batting my lashes. “Do I get any incentives for saving the world? Seems like a full-time gig, and I'm a busy guy.”

“Sorry bud, your writings starting out all pro-bono with little chance of promotion. You’ll write and write but don’t ever think you’ll get any appreciation for what you do, at least, in your own lifetime. Look at Lawrence. I still don’t think people like him. But who knows. Anything can happen. You might hit a stride with the people and make it big. Plus--” He raised his eyebrows suggestively and nudged my side with his elbow. “We'll be working close together from here on out. The Hero and the Author. How's that for incentive? For our next adventure we'll bring my best friend back to life. You’ll like her, she’s a giant space moth.” He held his catkin again and wiggled it around.

“That's what I'm concerned about—more adventures, with you.” I looked at the little eggs. “And more bugs.”

“No going back now, bro. The Cataclysm has happened; so you've got to write, no matter how many moons have fallen.”

He smiled and looked at me. My Hero. My Muse. My Marine.

“Maybe we can rework everything that happened tonight into a novel,” I said.

“Let's stick to short stories. Your present oeuvre could use some polishing and a couple rewrites.”

“Nah, think about it. My story can be expanded super easily.”

“How about bed first?” He stretched and yawned, and to my surprise, put his long arm around my shoulder. The sun made his muscles warm. “Actually, maybe you could buy me breakfast, for keeping me up all night.”

“Even though you’re at fault,” I said, “you got yourself a deal, partner.” We started walking to find someplace open to dine. I was being the perfect gentleman. Getting the kid breakfast. I hope he’d be a happy camper.

“After we grub we can shack up at your place. You're right down the street, right Dave?”

OK, now he’s making it hard to be a gentleman.

Time to change the subject. Here was my opening. “So you wanna see the the perfect last line?”

“Don’t be a tease.”

Finally, I showed him the words forever scarred into my flesh. Together we read aloud, Bennet holding my other hand as the sun woke the world:

“‘And they lived happily ever after.’”

The end.²