Who we Choose to Be VOL 1. CHP 2 VERSE 4.

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter Two

Verse Four: Who we Choose to Be

"I thought you said they weren't hallucinations?" Marion said.
 


"I said you didn't have a tumour." Harley answer carefully, "You told me that you're seeing things. If I've heard you right, that means you've either had visions or hallucinations. I'm going to tend to assume hallucinations until I hear something that convinces me to call them visions. I'm not intending to be insulting, but calling them visions requires a pretty high level of proof. Don't you agree?"
 


"I just feel like my life is being stolen by something big and awful and crazy." Marion answered, "I'm going along minding my own business and suddenly I'm walking in something out of C. S. Lewis' acid trips. I don't like it. And it's starting to seem less and less like just dreams and hallucinations and more and more like prophecy or visions or something really big and crazy and beyond what I feel ready to handle."
 


"You didn't have a dream about Darius Salt until after you met him right? That doesn't sound like a prophecy, that sounds like your brain incorporating things into a hallucination. Which isn't a fun prospect, I'll admit. But if you want answers you need to listen for what seems most reasonable given the evidence."
 


"I didn't meet Darius salt until after but I did see his wife Mary in the vision before I met her. And in the vision, she asked me to look after her children! And her daughter, Maia, called me Dreamer when she met me. And I was called Dreamer in the first Dream! I didn't tell her any of that. I haven't told any of that to anyone but you. So I'm not just adding information to the hallucinations after I learn it. I'm actually get prophetic visions ahead of time!"
 


"Are you sure that the woman in your dream was the same woman? Could she have just looked similar? Didn't you say her name was different?"
 


"Yeah, her name was Morrigan in the dream. And she was dressed different, other than that she was the same person- same face, same build same hair."
 


"You're sure that isn't your memory playing tricks on you?"
 


"If it is, then I can't trust anything I think anymore so I may as well just check myself into an asylum."
 


"Don't go raising the volume to eleven just yet. Let's just keep reviewing this, and think reasonably and see what makes sense."
 


"What if the answer isn't reasonable?"
 


"Well, then we address that when and if that's what it starts to sound like- but that would require pretty clear evidence. And even then, we still have to make our living in a reasonable world using reasonable rules. So even if you are having prophetic visions, we
need to make certain that after your visions are gone, that we aren't in jail or on trial. So let's take it slow and not assume prophetic visions out of the gate. And, let's move faster on getting you a job so that we can afford life essentials like yogurt and pickles."
 


"Always the reasonable one."
 


"That's why we're a good team. I have to head to work. You should look for work. Do you have an up to date resume?"
 


"My laptop got stolen, I might have one in my email if I can use your computer."
 


"Help yourself. I need to go. Good luck."
 


"Don't wish me good luck. You know I'm never lucky."
 


"I don't think you're unlucky. I think you're in the wrong place doing things you were never meant to do. You just have to find your place, and things will start to make sense."
 


"That's what's starting to scare me about the visions."
 


"Let's leave the discussion of the visions for another time. Job first, prophecy second. Pickle money before Prophecy."

Harley dropped the daily newspapers in Marin's lap before he left for work. Marion flipped through the classified section in an obligatory way before discarding the papers and returning to pondering the visions. Marion pulled some printer paper out of Harley's Printer and began drawing out notes to organize the things he had seen. The Firebird seemed important and he gave it a section. The Locust King seemed central and so it got a section of its own as well. The Wendigo had shown up twice, but Marion wasn't sure that they deserved their own section. Marion put the agent looking Men of Black and white under the Locust King section along with the Giant snake thing called Falsenight and the alien looking creature called The Grey. Marion added a note for the Knights of Purity and a line with a question mark cautiously connecting The Knights of Purity and the Men of Black and White. Remembering Mary and Morrigan's red bird patterned clothing, Marion listed both names under the Fire bird along with Maia. After a moment he added the son Fitzroy but with a question mark since the boy hadn't said anything. Darius Salt was placed under the Locust King. And under the Firebird section, Marion added a line with a question mark leading to the word spider and then another line with a question mark back to the locust King section. He added a note under the Locust King for the Chessboard room and another note for the Fantasy Village. He thought back to the first dream, the one in which he and Harley had been called Dreamer and Walker, and not knowing where to file that added a section that he simply labelled as 'first dream'. Under there he added: Dreamer, Walker, and Dreamwalker, then circled them all together and drew lines connecting them to Maia and to Mary/Morrigan. After some consideration he added a note for the delivery guy because of his reference to a phoenix and put a dashed line with a question mark connecting the delivery guy to the firebird. Marion noted several recurring themes, the firebird obviously. The delivery guy talked about a phoenix and called it a firebird. Morrigan and Mary both wore red bird designs on black clothing which seemed to match the vision of the firebird flying through the void of space. Marion's second full vision and first waking vision had been of the firebird. So whatever it was, it seemed to be important. The Firebird also seemed to be a good guy, in as much as Marin's visions could be divided into good guys and bad guy. Likewise, the Locust King seemed to very much qualify as a bad guy, as well as everyone associated with him. Marion couldn't quite tell you was in charge though, as the Locust King seemed not to control the agents known as the Men of Black and White. They seemed to have other superior officers. And Falsenight seemed less like anybody's servant and more like a force of nature.  It was all so jumbled, and Marion wasn't getting the nice neat course overview. He was getting thrown into the mid term exam with no study sessions.

Marion sat puzzling over the symbols and motifs in his visions until his cell phone beeped to announce that Marion had received a text message. Marion opened the phone and read the text. It was from Harley.

<<Hope the job search goes well. No trouble with my computer, I hope?>>

Marion realized he'd been sitting pondering for better than two hours. He quickly sent a text back.

<<Haven't got it working yet.>>

After a brief pause, Marion heard a chime indicated Harley had sent a text back to him.

<<Marion. I'm using my stern parent voice.>>

Marion quickly replied with his own text.

<<Yes, Dad. I'm on it. Out the door any minute now>>

He quickly loaded up his cloud storage through Harley's internet browser and brought up an old resume. The resume was outdated, and he had to mess with it a little to smooth out gaps in his employment history. But he quickly got the thing looking reasonable for menial labour and printed out copies. He hadn't washed his clothes, but a quick smell test and a look in the mirror left Marion feeling okay about that- although he sincerely regretted throwing away his tie now. Harley had left the spare key on the kitchen table and Marion grabbed it and one of Harley's canvas shopping bags to hold his printed resumes. He opened the door cautiously and looked around. Marion couldn't see Mrs. Critchwood in the yard, so he stepped out and turned around to close the door. He was just locking the door when a sharp tin voice behind him spoke loudly enough to make him jump.

"What are you doing here when your friend is at work boy?"

Marion turned around to face the coiled question mark with a witch's nose that was Mrs. Critchwood. She wore old grey sweaters and old grey socks and old ankle length skirts that may have been grey and may just have been too faded to retain a colour. Her hair was restrained in a bun with cheap hair ties.

"Hi, Mrs. Critchwood. How are you doing?"

"I asked you a question boy?"

Marion pulled the papers out of the canvas bag, careful not to show what was printed on them. "I needed to use a printer and my computer got stolen, so Harley said I could use his."

"Why didn't you do it when he was home? And come to think of it, why aren't you at work, hmmm?"

"Because I needed to print them off now, when he was off work would be too late. I don't work today, I started early yesterday and stayed late the day before. Mother day is busy for book season after all. We all know how important our mother's are. But I really need to go, if I'm going to get my errands finished. It's erratic what days I don't work, so I have to take advantage of it. I hope you have a great day."

"I'm watching you like a vulture watching a neglected baby in the desert boy. You better stay on the almighty's good side, because I will be watching you."

"Yes ma'am. I have to go."

Marion squeezed past her and ran. Now Mrs. Critchwood had seen him. It wasn't like he didn't show up when Harley wasn't home normally, but Marion figured he had a finite number of moments like that before Mrs. Critchwood put the pieces together. And Amy added an unpleasant variable to the whole calculation. Marion needed to hand out resumes and find himself a new slave master to pay for his daily bread. He started by going to one of the locally owned independent bookstores, where his education would be -hopefully- and asset and not 'you really are overqualified', which Marion didn't understand. If he had more skills than was necessary, wasn't that a good thing. Maybe they preferred people who had no other options and no ability to question the idiots who ended up as managers. But the book store was a bust. Marion tried handing a resume to the girl at the desk, but when she saw the name her expression changed. She told Marion not to bother giving the resume to the manager, they'd received a call from Percy Wheately telling them not to hire Marion. She indicated that Wheately had named Marion and said he was a liability claim waiting to happen. She also told him that it sounded like Wheately was calling all the local bookstores, and not to bother with bookstores. Marion was deflated by this, but continued on. He handed out resumes at pretty much any retail shop that he passed and, although nobody else told him that Wheately had called to black list him (Marion doubted his ex-manager had any pull outside the book industry) they all gave him the same appraising look that said he wasn't a high school student or a college student anymore and was over qualified with a weird employment history and obvious gaps where he had no job for months at a time. Marion knew what that look meant. His resume was going in the trash.

He was sitting at one of the outdoor tables at The London Fog Cafe, nursing a green tea latte he had bought with a gift card he'd discovered in his now barren wallet, when a familiar voice interrupted his moping.

"Marion! I heard you were robbed! And then that horrible Mr. Grimly threw you out! What an awful man. How's your brain tumour dear?" Marion looked up to see Mrs. Trilby walking Mercer on one of the awkward cat harness leashes. Mercer was the only cat that tolerated the lease. Mercer immediately nuzzled Marion and wormed up into his lap. Marion began to stroke the cat and Mercer responding with the purr of an oncoming freight train. Mrs. Trilby sat down in the chair opposite Marion, "You look so sad dear, what's wrong?"

And so Marion brought her up to date, him losing his job, losing his apartment, being robbed, Harley's fight with Amy. He told her everything except the visions. She already thought he had a tumour after all. Mrs. Trilby listened quietly and when he explained that he had hadn't out something like twenty six resumes and was fairly confident that they were all doomed, she shook her head.

"You will find your way through this dear. I know this. You are a good person. You like cats, and no person who likes cats can ever be all bad. And you help people. You helped me and Mercer, and don't you forget it. We won't. Now people always say that cats are magic, but I think the best Mercer is going to give you is love. Me on the other hand, I'm going to buy you lunch. And then with a full belly you can take another whack at this whole job search thing a little better balanced. How does that sound?"

"Thank you Mrs. Trilby."

"Think nothing of it. Everyone likes to pay their debts."

She bought Marion a hot dog from the little diner next to the cafe, and overloaded it with sauerkraut and relish and handed it to Marion, who happily devoured it. The two chatted a little more, mostly about Mrs. Trilby's cats while Mercer dug a contented nest in Marion's lap. Finally they parted and Marion set out a little more optimistic and ready to face further rejection. He'd printed about thirty resumes and only had four left. So he went about looking to get rid of them. But no matter where he went he got the look that promised no call back and no job. On his last resume, Marion decided to bite the bullet and try The Seed Bank and Hydroponics Shop that everyone knew sold mainly cannabis seeds. The shop had a help wanted sign in the window. Marion didn't want to work surrounded by the smell of marijuana, but he knew he needed work. He walked into the sauna of sweet rotting vegetable matter that was the shop and a stereotype in blonde dreadlocks and a Bob Marley shirt sporting a greasy scraggle of a goatee greeted him with a look at Marion's clothes that wasn't promising. Marion handed the being behind the counter his last resume and watched as the face under the dreadlocks twisted and contorted. Finally he addressed Marion.

"This resume man. It tells a story. I can read your life in this resume better than any fricking tea leaves. You study literature all the way to a Master's degree, but not to a PhD or a teaching degree. You got problems with authority and you prefer fiction to reality. You never stay longer than a year at job man, and then you don't work for like four to six months. You have a problem conforming to the structures and rules provided man. You have no skills that work in the real work man, your whole resume tells me where you live most of your life and that's in fantasy land. Nobody is going to give you a job. Not even us."

Marion stared at the the upturned mop of a human in disbelief, "You're a marijuana shop."

"No man, we are a cannabis seed supply store."

"You see a difference?"

"One is legal man. If you can't follow the rules, you're never going to make it in the real world. You don't have to like the rules you just have to know they ain't going to change."

"So I'm too rebellious to sell marijuana?"

"No man. You're too rebellious to self cannabis seeds legally."

"It's not any more right this way."

"Nope. It's just more legal. It ain't about right. The man don't care about right. The man only Cares about rules. His rules. You follow them. Even if you bend them he only cares that you walked his line. You walk in circles man. You're life is nothing but circle. We can't hire you. We need people who can walk the line. Like Johnny cash man."

"With dreadlocks." Marion shook his head, the man behind the counter didn't notice.

"Yeah man, like Johnny Cash with dreadlocks. Like, he's still the man and he still walks the line, but with an attitude that says 'Yeah, I follow the rules, but I do it my way.' You know what I mean?"

"That makes no sense."

"You don't get it man, and that's why we can't hire you."

The Path of Fear VOL 1 CHP 2. VERSE 3

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter Two

Verse Three: The Path of Fear

After Amy left, the mood became significantly more awkward. Harley kept trying to obliquely assure Marion than no harm had been done. Marion kept pointing out that Amy's ultimatum was more than no harm. And the two eventually descended into an uncomfortable silence as they sat on the brown microfiber couch watching Horrible Science Fiction movies from the seventies on Harley's old tube Television. Some time after eleven Harley wandered to bed after throwing Marion some sheets and a pillow, leaving Marion alone with the cold white glow of the television talking about the

 terrors of the unknown and the evils come to devour mankind from outer space.

Marion  wasn't ready to fall asleep and face is probably hallucinogenic nightmares, and continued watching the parade of dark and lurid entertainment on the shimmering screen before him. Bored with dated science fiction plots, Marion began channel surfing and eventually settled on watching the Lovecraftian horror classic "In the Mouth of Madness", about an insurance investigator who finds himself drawn into a web of insanity by an author who seems able to control reality itself by his storytelling.

The story climaxed with the investigator hiding in a mental institution pretending to be insane so that he could hide there. Marion didn't appreciate the parallels, but kept watching until the world ended and the film was over.

As the film ended, a television show began to play, one with which Marion wasn't familiar. Called the 'Unbroken Line', the series opened with a gleaming glass highrise identical to the one from Harley's earlier Firebird hallucination. Dramatic orchestral music and ominous faux latin chanting rose as the camera panned around the tower before using a wipe cut to transition to an interior shot of an austere white and grey office occupied by a man standing with his back to the camera looking out at the skyline.

Three government agent looking men entered from off camera, dark glasses and ear pieces visible. They stood in a line behind the man, who ignored them. The agent in the centre raised his right hand and touched his index finger to his ear piece.

"Bring her in."

The man remained motionless with his back to the agents.

"We've discussed your debts, you are aware how much you owe if our agreement is to continue." The centre agent said.

The man at the window said nothing. The agent on the left spoke.

"You have yet to meet the quotas. The quotas are not negotiable. If you wish us to provide continued assistance, you must provide us with the agreed quotas."

The man at the window spoke, "Feast with me and starve tomorrow. Fight against me and die today. That's the deal, right?"

The centre agent spoke again, "The feast can only be maintained by meeting the quota. Your success has resulted in growth. Growth means a larger empire to sustain. A larger empire requires a larger quota to maintain our end of the bargain. This is not negotiable. There are consequences for failing to meet your side of the contract."

The door behind the agents opened and from where he stood Marion could see a four agent had entered the office with Maia, Fitzroy and Mary Salt. Marion turned sharply back to look at the man at the window as he finally turned around.

"They don't need to be here." Darius Salt said quietly.

"They have value, beyond their mere biological worth, beyond their labour value. They can be used to meet the quotas. All of them have power, value to the story. Any one of them could dramatically improve your progress towards meeting the quota."

As the agents spoke, the walls of the office began to shatter in slow motion and drift away, leaving a vast black and white checkerboard floor extending as far as the eye could see. A grey fog rolled in, wet with steam and soot. And coiling out of the fog came the enormous serpentine figure of Falsenight. The huge oily black Python radiated steam as he moved across the tiles. Marion spun around and realized that he was now standing in a long line of people slowly marching up to be devoured systematically by Falsenight. Looking ahead, Marion saw Harley standing in line, much closer to Falsenight imposes jaws than Marion.

Darius Salt stood to the side of the whole spectacle with the agents and his family.

"I will not offer my son for the quota. My line will remain unbroken. I cannot continue the line without an heir."

"Then offer one or both of the females, with them added to the quota you might still succeed in reaching the current quota."

"One of the females. You mean my wife and daughter! You're asking me to be a cannibal! You may as well ask me to gnaw my own leg off!"

Falsenight paused in his meal and hissed at Darius, "It may come to that, but not yet. And why this pretence of honour now? You repeatedly strike your mate, and verbally abuse both of them. Any loyalty to them is overshadowed by your treatment of them. This veneer of morality in unconvincing and comes much too late. I hunger and I will be fed. You know this Darius." The last syllable hissed across the room.

"Don't you make me the villain!" Darius roared, "I didn't do this alone, you helped me. You tempted me and encouraged me."

"Yes, we did. And that is what we do. We tempt. And you accepted our bargain. We did not deceive you. Now you must meet the quota or pay the price of not doing so. What is your choice Darius?"

Marion broke from the line and ran to Harley. He grabbed Harley by the wrist and dragged his friend out of the line The agents turned as one, "The Dreamer is here. The Walker is here. We are exposed. But they have not awakened. They are vulnerable. Pursue and apprehend the targets."

Marion dragged Harley along as the footsteps of the men of Black and White echoed on the checkerboard floor. Marion could feel them getting closer and closer until he suddenly felt a hand grab his shoulder and he jolt up from the couch flailing wildly and knocked Harley backwards in surprise. Harley's arms pinwheeled and he regained his balance and looked and Marion with a slight but noticeable expression of pity.

"Bad dreams?"

"You have no idea." Marion answered, looking around at the early morning light playing across the basement suite walls.

"You had a rough day yesterday, I would have been surprised to hear that you slept well. No offence."

"Yeah, but the hallucinations or dreams or visions or whatever are starting to tie together. I don't know that they're making sense yet. It's kind of like like a Peanut butter Thai hamburger."

"Did I just hear you right?"

"See that's exactly it. If I started pulling out sweet thai sauce and peanut butter and bacon and then starting frying up a hamburger, you'd know I was cooking something, but you wouldn't know what until I started assembling the whole thing. And it tastes so amazing too. You have to use crunchy peanut butter though or it just doesn't work."

"Like your metaphor?"

"But you get the idea right? I'm getting visions of things that seem all different. Government agents and evil Lord of the Ring type Empires and space birds and now Darius Salt and his family are part of it, and it looks like Darius is somehow secretly the Evil King and his Wife is the lady from my visions who wants me to save her kids and its all getting really freaky, because the government agent guys that have been watching me seem to be shaking him down and he doesn't like it, so I don't know what's going on."

"If I've heard you right, the only thing that's actually happened is that you've been seeing things, dreams or hallucinations."

"You think it's a tumour." Marion said flatly.

"Did you hear me say 'tumour'? I'm not assuming any kind of cause here. I'm just listening to what you've actually said you've experienced. All I've heard for sure is that you're seeing things that seem to be hallucinations and sometimes proper dreams. That's not much to make a case for magical empires and such."

Harley's pocket played the first few notes of Thus Spake Zarathustra and Harley looked at his Blackberry in response. Harley's brow furrowed, just slightly.

"What is it?" Marion asked.

"Another five guys just took early retirement packages. Five people in my Department.  Five guys senior to me. A lot of people have taken early retirement deals recently. coworkers are starting to worry and starting to gossip, that's what I'm hearing here."

"Is the company in trouble?"

"I don't think so, but the parent company might be. They could be trying to trim expenses from our company to help overall profitability."

"Who's the parent company?"

"Salt and Sons Enterprises Inc."

Marion stood up.

"Might this company have any connection to Darius Salt, the guy who got me fired and about whom I've been having crazy freaking visions? Any chance?"

"He's the CEO, and a shareholder I think."

"And this doesn't seem crazy to you?"

"It sounds coincidental at this point. I'm more concerned about your lack of a job and my suddenly less secure employment status to be honest. If they're offering early retirement now, lay offs may come next. We can't manage if neither of us have a job. So forget your hallucinations for now, or at least try to keep them under control; go look for a job, we may need it more than we thought previously."

The Chorus and the Magpie VOL 1. CHP 2. VERSE 2

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter Two

Verse Two: The Chorus and the Magpie

Harley's landlady could be heard walking above them. The floors creaked with each step, and the old house seemed to flex with each footfall. Harley looked up reflexively each time the creaks announced that the landlady's movement through the house. The landlady was a widow, Marion knew this. And Marion knew that the rent for Harley's basement suite was very low, even accounting for the fact that the suite did not include laundry and had only a shower and not a bathtub.

Harley clasped his hands behind him, letting Marion know how concerned the situation had made his friend. Harley's father worked as an accountant and his mother worked a claims investigator for an insurance firm. Harley's parents had trained Harley that everything needed to be in neat little lines and carefully documented, that any error could be fatal. Harley had not internalized this as thoroughly as they had hoped. Despite this deviance from his parent's teachings, Marion had always trusted Harley to be the reliable one, the steady and methodical one. Harley didn't yell, didn't fly off the handle, didn't jump at shadows, didn't get drunk and take an inflatable moose to prom. Marion did that stuff, and Harley still pulled Marion's fat out of the fire.

"I'm sorry to do this to you. I feel like a colossal screw up. And I'm starting to think I really do have something wrong with my brain."

"You're problem is that you're too nice and don't know how to compromise your standards. That's a tough combination." Harley said in his usual level voice, the kind of voice you would use to speak to panicking toddler.

"You're the one who's too nice. How many times are you going to help me after I screw things up?"

"All of them." Harley said, "Who collected pop cans all summer so I could afford to go on the exchange program to Greece? Who cleaned up the Chemistry lab after I blew up the fume hood, so I didn't have to stay behind and miss the basketball quarter finals? Who skipped class to run to the flower shop to buy flowers for Amy when I found she was allergic to the flowers I'd already bought? You've helped me just as often as I've helped you. We're best friends and that's what you do."

Marion looked away and wiped his eyes before turning back.

"Thanks. That means a lot to me."

"We're friends. Night and Day. That's not going to change. I've got your back. The challenge here is my landlady."

"I don't really know her, except that she's kind of a funny old lady."

"Mrs. Critchwood is a suspicious lady who doesn't rent to loud renters and doesn't trust quiet renters. She doesn't work and needs to rent out the basement suite to make enough money to get by, but she doesn't like doing that."

"Why doesn't she like quiet renters?" Marion asked.

"She thinks they're up to something. She thinks everyone is up to something."

"She'd really have a problem with me crashing at your place while I get back on my feet?"

"She has a problem with Amy staying the night. Although that's partially because she has a problem with us 'being sinful in the eyes of the almighty' or something equally old fashioned. So yeah. She has a problem with everything."

"So I just stay out of sight in the mornings. I come over a fair amount already. How would she know if I'm staying here if she doesn't see me before noon?"

"She comes and goes at all hours, so it won't be easy. She's on long-term disability from her job, I don't know what for- she just says it's something you can't see."

Harley walked back and forth as he spoke, closing his eyes frequently to concentrate.

"I don't think she sleeps much, and she's up awfully early. She gardens a lot, which is going to make sneaking in and out difficult. You'll need a job as quick as possible, so you need to be handing out resumes. But you'll have to check if she's outside. If she's in the house, she likes to sit in the living room. I see her staring out the window all the time when I come home, so use the back yard to avoid being seen. But don't do that around noon or dinner time, she'll be in the kitchen then."

"You make this sound like a James Bond movie."

"It basically will be. The rent is really good here and I don't want to lose this place, but she's completely unhinged and that complicates things."

As Marion listened to Harley, he heard the door open and looked to see Amy closing the door behind her as she entered. Amy was Harley's girlfriend, she stood about five feet tall and was a tiny faerie like girl who seemed vulnerable to even the slightest breeze. Her face scrunched as though she had eaten a whole grapefruit when she saw Marion.

"The freak is here, I see. I thought we were alone tonight." She said as she dropped her tote bag in the entry way and kicked off her fur lined boots, "What was your plan for dinner? Are we sharing our dinner with the loonie?"

Harley turned to face Amy as he answered, "I hadn't taken the time to think about dinner. Marion's in a pickle and I've been helping him. He needs a place to stay for a while."

Amy narrowed her eyes and Harley began to pace again in response.

"And where is he going to stay?" Amy asked, her voice rising in tone and volume as she spoke.

"He's been evicted from his place." Harley said, “His landlord is a jerk and so is his boss. So he got fired and evicted as a result of a kind of ludicrous pile of bad luck and weird coincidences. I mean this is the sort of thing in a story that makes you think the author is out of ideas and so he's just going to play go. You either laugh or cry. So he has no job and no home right now. So he needs a place to stay. And he's my best friend, so I'm letting him sleep on the couch while he gets things sorted." Harley maintained his usual tone as he spoke although as he continued to speak he began to speed up, his words starting to bump into each other on the way out.

Amy shook her head and continued to scrunch her face up. "The loonie has moved in with you? He was bad enough when he just visited occasionally. You are not getting laid while he's around to listen and enjoy himself."

"I can go for a walk." Marion offered.

"That's a good idea," Amy said, squaring her feet and placing her hands on her shoulders, "Take your junk with you and find a park bench. That's about your standard, right?"

"Hey." Harley said, his voice just a hair above it's normal calm level, "Marion is my best friend. It's not appropriate to talk to him like that."

"Come on guys," Marion said, "Don't fight. Let's not follow the script to every crummy romantic comedy ever made."

"Do you hear him insulting me?" Amy's voice rose to a shrill edge.

"That wasn't an insult. He doesn't want us to fight. I don't want us to fight." Harley kept his voice even as he spoke, but he was still pacing.

"He's the cause of the fight, so he doesn't get a say in what happens in this house." Amy thrust an index finger to the ground for emphasis as she spoke.

"I've known him since we were little. I've known him longer than I've known anybody but my family. He's my best friend."

"He's a loonie and screw up and now he's a mooch." As Amy spoke, Harley kept looking up at his ceiling in short little glances. His eyes would flick upward and then return to looking at Amy as she spoke. "I can talk about him how I like, and you don't get to tell what to do."

"I'm not telling you what to do." Marion said, he voice perfectly level, "I am pointing out that you are being mean to my best friend after he has had maybe the worst day of his life. And I am pointing out that such behaviour isn't very nice."

"Tough. Weaklings are nice and the world walks all over them. It's walking over you right now and apparently sleeping on your couch. Marion is a loonie who needs to be put in an asylum- and if you want to let your place be that asylum then that's just proof at how much he manipulates you.

"Maybe I should just go." Marion said.

"Best idea you've ever had." Amy answered.

"You aren't going." Harley said to Marion. Then he turned and spoke to Amy again, "You would honestly let him sleep on a park bench? Do you think that's the decent thing to do?"

"The decent thing wouldn't be for him to barge into your home and your life like this. He just needs to go. In fact, I not going to spend time here when that loonie is still in the building. Either he sleeps here or I do, not both. You can decide who's more important to you. But if he's not gone soon, I'm going to let Mrs. Witch Lady upstairs know that Marion is here. Then we'll see what's decent."

Amy then turned around and stuffed her feet back in her boots and stormed out. She slammed the door very loudly on the way out an Harley flinched and looked up to the ceiling again.

There was a long moment of silence in which to the two friends stared at the door.

"Well that didn't go well." Harley finally said in to the silence.

"She forgot her tote bag." Marion said.

No Going Home VOL 1. CHP 2. VERSE 1

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter Two

Verse One: No Going Home

Marion managed to trudge out to the alleyway before he started to quietly cry. He looked around the alleyway. Seeing the poster with its secret agent in Dark Glasses and a dark suit and tie, Marion clenched his teeth and threw his sleeping bag at the poster.

"I didn't ask to hallucinate a whole pile a inane nonsense! I don't need to be seeing arsonist pheasants and space spiders and wannabe secret agents and knock-off Narnias with special zombies!"

The sleeping bag unfurled and flopped to the ground like a giant piece of red bubble gum. Marion slumped over and dropped onto his knees on the sleeping bag. He knelt, crying quietly.

"Well I screwed that up royally. My life was crappy enough as it was. I was just barely holding it together. And now it’s all broken. I didn't have big dreams. I wasn't going to be the next Peter Jackson. I wasn't even going to be the next Roger Ebert. But I could have run a successful movie and book blog. I could have built a nice little commentary and review site and been clever and snarky and had people pay me to write stuff. But apparently that was more than you guys wanted to give me. I get to go insane prophet at the worst possible time. So now what? Are you happy? Or do you want to kick me again?"

Movement drew Marion's attention from the poster. As he focused his vision, he caught a glimpse of another government agent watching him. Marion blinked and the figure was gone.

"Typical. Rodney Dangerfield would pity me for the amount of respect the universe accords me."

"Did you ever ask why the universe if doing this?"

"Why bother? Wait." Marion answered and then stopped suddenly and stood up looking around wildly for the source of the new voice. The Alley remained empty.

"I'm afraid I don't have the luxury of waiting. You think the universe is kicking you. Have you ever considered the possibility that you are not being kicked, but rather nudged?"

"Nudged? This was one hell of a nudge. I now own precisely thirteen things in this world if you count each sock and shoe as a separate item and also include my overdrawn bank account and soon to be cancelled credit card. What's the universe do for an encore? Kill all my family members, because I don't even know where you'd look for them. I guess my family was round one and this was round two, right? Maybe a warrant for my arrest? Maybe give me malignant cancer? What's round three?"

"You keep saying 'universe', you should be saying 'story'."

Marion kept spinning and suddenly saw the delivery guy from the bookstore standing at the entrance to the alley in his tweed jacket and red shirt. Marion noticed this time, that the man had a gold lapel pin of a bird on the left lapel.

"It is you. Why are you doing this to me? What are you doing? What is this? If this is a story, why are you stealing all the most cliche elements from every other story?"

"Not cliche, archetypal."

"Great you're going to ruin my life because we disagree on literary semantics."

"Stories are cyclical. Each telling creates the story anew in the mind of the audience, who tells it again. Stories resurrect themselves. The phoenix and the story are the same. Unless the story is lost."

"Of course a brain tumour of mine would cause me to hallucinate an argumentative literary god. I'm going to die while engaging in critical discourse with an amalgam of every pretentious classmate and professor I ever had. Brilliant."

"Everyone dies. The stupid error of this age is to chase immortality, burning the future to prolong the present. This is what life is like without a story. This is what life will look like if the story remains lost."

The air around Marion shimmered and the terrain altered. The location was the same, but buildings were ruined and abandoned, police tape festooned every outcropping and no window remained unbroken. Orange traffic cone and orange plastic safety barricades. Several trash cans burned in the distance. Building were stained white with ash from fires and bullet marks cut pockmarked lines across most facades.

In front of Marion, in place of the delivery man was a young girl. She was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old with short black hair and a pleasantly cute round face. she was dressing brown with a red spider web logo on her hooded sweater. She wore a reflective orange vest on over top her sweater.

"You came back." She said, "I didn't think you would. Where's Walker?:

"Okay, I don't think we've met before. At least not from my point of view."

"I don't understand. We have met, that's not a question."

"I've been hallucinating a lot of things lately, but I haven't hallucinated you or the city in ruins before. This is new."

"Then how have I met you?"

"It's a time travel paradox thing. So when I hallucinate you again, I'll be able to use the stuff I know from this conversation to help you."

"But this isn't a hallucination, and I need help now. The factions are at war. the refugees are piling up. People are dying. I know this hasn't happened yet in your time Dreamer. But please, I need help. You said that the secret was to save First Mother and keep her story true. Have you done that yet?"

"This is the first I've heard of it. But I promise I'll do my best."

"No, you must do better. You swore to my mother upon your place in the story. You must do this or what you see will come to pass."

"Wait, what?" Marion said. But as he spoke, the girl and the post-apocalyptic future version of the city faded away.

Marion shook his head. The world again looked normal.

"If this was a movie, I'd shoot the director." Marion muttered, "So what are the chances that, in denial of all physical realities and all known laws of science, I am in fact having a series of mystic visions of some sort of magical European past and also some sort of cliched post-apocalyptic future? Let's see. Zombies that they refuse to call zombies? Check. Quest to save a chosen child? Check. Evil Empire oppressing people? Check. Secret CIA clone looking agent-esque secret police? Check. Heavy symbolism? Check. Oblique references to rebel and/or noble savage resistance forces? Check. Post Apocalyptic setting? Check. Anachronistic faux Europe fantasy setting? Check. Prophecies that foretell what must be done? Check. If this is real, then I have having visions of the most cliched mystic vision quest ever conceived. If it's hallucinations brought on by a brain tumour, well it doesn't say great things for the originality of my sub-conscious either. But hallucination girl is right, first good advice I've received from these things. I do need to do better. Okay, I'm in trouble and I've got no options. What can I do? Who can I turn to in my time of need?"

Marion nodded to himself and reached into his pocket. He picked up his phone and selected his first saved contact.

The phone rang once and then a familiar voice answered, "This is Harley, I can hear you."

Harley listened as marion poured out everything that had gone wrong in the brief time since they'd spoken last. He listened as Marion explained the escalating visions that were probably just hallucinations. He listened as marion explained the horrible chain of misfortune that led to his firing. He listened as Marion talked about the weird bits with the Salt family where it seemed like his hallucinations might mean something. Harley listened. He didn't interrupt, just occasionally asked questions to make sure he understood what Marion was trying to convey. He didn't mock Marion or dismiss anything that Marion said. He just listened.

"So what do I do?" Marion asked as he finished.

"You bunk at my place until you get back on your feet."

"No, bad idea." Marion immediately objected, "Amy doesn't like me. You've said yourself your landlady doesn't like me. And I know things are tight with you as well."

"I hear what you're saying Marion, but I'm not leaving you to sleep in the park and I don't have any other way to help you. My family doesn't live anywhere near close enough to help and you don't have any family left to ask to help. We'll have to work around my landlady. And Amy will have to manage."

"Amy doesn't manage. She could part the harbour waters by deciding she wanted to walk out to a boat without getting wet."

"Be reasonable Marion. She's not that bad."

"Me staying at your place is going to place all kinds of stress on your life that you aren't really safe to carry." Marion argued, "I don't want to be the dead beat friend who screws up his buddy's romantic comedy dynamic. Your landlord will want to raise the rent if she finds out there's an extra person. And you talk about how the changing technology is shaking up your industry and nothing is safe, like everyone is afraid that they're going to make Skynet or turn machines self aware or summon the Borg from Delta Quadrant or something like that."

"Marion, your other alternative is to sleep under a tree in the park. and I can't do that to my friend. You're crashing on my couch while you look for a new job."

Marion took a breath and smiled, "Thanks. Now the only question is whether I should be more concerned with possibility that I have a brain tumour or the possibility that I'm the chosen hero of a fantasy shadow world."

Harley laughed quietly on the other line, "Well if you're a mythic hero of fantasy land we'll know when the mystic warriors bust down our door."

"Wow," Marion said, "Why don't you just cap it off by asking what else can go wrong?"

* * *

The two knights of Purity knelt in the throne room of the Locust King.

"A man appears and summons twin tomahawks, the weapons of the Dreamer. The Dreamer! And you let him get away?"

"There was a wendigo as well Majesty. It killed one of our number. The stranger assisted us. But it couldn't have been the actual dreamer, he was no where near skilled enough with the weapons to be the Dreamer." The older soldier said.

The captive wizard Myrddhin stood to The Locust King's left, dressed in black with a cloak that was lined inside with a design of stars and screaming faces. As the soldiers waited, Myrddhin leaned in, "Perhaps the dreamer is early in his path, a novice yet. And without the Walker beside him, he is no threat. Perhaps more pressing is the threat of Blackhart and his alliance of tribes. Reports say that Blackhart's savages have ambushed three expeditionary forces into the lowlands. We have no credible maps of the area and do not known where his villages are hiding. We cannot beat him if we cannot meet him on the battlefield."

"And Blackhart cannot strike at our centre or do enough damage to stop our expansion. He's nothing more than a delay. And you call him savage? As though you aren't one yourself? That's the genius of the Empire Myrddhin, sooner or later everyone becomes a citizen of the Empire. Where's the Bone Man? I want the Dreamer dealt with before he can reach full potential. That grubby little insurrectionist is not stealing my children. The line will remain unbroken and Mordred will ascend to my throne after I have finished my rule."

"Do you really think this is a matter requiring the Bone Man? I could send a contingent of the Knights of Purity after them. Why bother the Bone Man?"

"I know the stories Myrddhin. You know the stories. Do not underestimate him because of his current condition, that is the mistake of advisors the world over. Do not allow prophecies to be fulfilled. Prophecies are created by people who need change. We are in power and so any prophecy will not benefit us. And so we must oppose the prophecy as soon as we hear a whisper of it."

"As you say my lord, but I think of other stories where the King did indeed try to prevent the prophecy early and in so doing caused the prophecy to come to pass."

"That is a risk, of course. That's why I'm sending the Bone Man and not just a few of his knights."

Myrddhin nodded and stepped back. The Locust King looked down at the two Knights.

"Send word to your commander. I want him to lead a detachment of his best personally to find and eliminate this nascent Storyteller and his counterpart. He may take as many as he needs, but he must finish the job. Myrddhin. Send for Lord Dracha and Lady Cinnabar, we will have to adjust for the loss of the Bone Man and his elite in the coming skirmishes with Blackhart. And have Morrigan bring my son to the hall, I want Mordred to see this. He will king one day and should not cling so close to his mother's apron."

Cutting the Knot VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 8

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Eight: Cutting the Knot

"Did you hear me, Marion? You're fired. You can return your name tag and leave."

"I think I'll dispute that." Marion said, "I need this job. And let's be honest, you need me. How late was I in last night getting this store ready for Mother's day? And on top of that, look at my sales numbers. You know that nobody in this store comes close to putting up the kind of sales numbers that I do. You'd have to hire three employees to replace my sales numbers, and that would triple the amount you have to pay to get the same amount of sales. I am far too useful to fire."

Mr. Wheately shook his head, "None of that matters if you can't properly prioritize your time. You wasted how many hours in the back this morning with some boutique seller? You could have been further maximizing sales potential on the floor. You are a continual missed opportunity for growth, and your mind isn't in the game. You don't promote the current promotions or follow sales protocol. You're a bad example to other more dedicated high achievers. And now, on top of that you're insulting customers and they're complaining about you."

Darius Salt placed his right hand on his hip and watched with a small grin.

"If you fired every employee that a customer become upset with," Marion countered, "You would have to fire everyone including yourself. Customers get angry all the time, especially in big box stores like this. You've seen this place at Christmas, the spirit of intolerance reigns supreme."

"Even you should know that each case is different. I look at each case where a customer becomes upset and judge it on its own basis. And then I compare it with their performance and their employee record."

"My performance history is great. You know my customer satisfaction score is second highest in the store. My sales numbers are untouchable." Marion said, "You just don't like me."

Maia pulled on her mother's dress again, "Make it stop Mom."

Mary hushed Maia, and Mr. Wheately continued on oblivious, "What I don't like is your continued tardiness. You didn't sneak in here unnoticed this morning. You didn't get away with your unacceptably long break. Your tardiness is ongoing and entirely unprofessional. How can I employ somebody who doesn't work the hours that they are scheduled to work."

"You could start by giving them the legally required amount of hours between shifts. That would be good. You could follow it up by not scheduling people on closing shifts and then opening shifts back to back. There are labour laws regarding this sort of stuff. Oh and you could give the the legally required amount of notice prior to changing our shifts. That would be a good way to make sure people can show up on time and work the shift they're scheduled to work. Or do labour laws get in the way of high achievement?"

Mr. Wheately's face clenched, and lines appeared to radiate out from his tightened jaw line. He looked around, and quickly spotted the enormous man who acted as the store's secret shopper. Mr. Wheately waved the man, named Burt, over to the group.

"Burt, Marion has elected to end his employment with Allons-Y Books, and needs to be escorted out of the store for security reasons. Can you assist him in this?"

Burt looked in surprise as Marion, "But the guy's cool. He doesn't ever do bad on the floor. Guy in the red tie here was about to hit the lady, and Marion stepped in the way. Marion's cool, I don't get the problem."

"Thanks Burt." Marion said.

"Your position here is not a decision making position Burt, it's an enforcement position. Now escort Marion out of the building or I will call the police and have two former employees escorted out."

"Yeah okay, if you think this is worth going Nuclear over then I guess so. Come on Marion. I know this isn't cool, but I don't have any choice in this."

"No problem Burt, we all need jobs." Marion said.

They began to walk away. Marion could see Maia desperately tugging on her mother's dress and her mother hushing her repeatedly.

"Oh, and Marion?" Mr. Wheately called, "If you even think about demanding your final pay check, then I will press harassment charges against you based on your conduct today. Cheers!"

"I could make a call to the Business Bureau. They'd be really interested to hear about your management style. That wouldn't make you look very good. A high achiever like you wouldn't want a business bureau complaint. Be hard to explain that when you apply for regional manager."

"I'd manage. The bureau gets more than enough crank calls from disgruntled ex-employees. And you'd find that word got around that you were the sort of person whose resume was best kept in a circular file."

"You aren't that influential."

"Try me."

"At least I never have to hear your buzzword spewing lies anymore. Just remember, everyone here thinks you're a lying petty dictator and nobody believes the rubbish you spew about achieving. We're customer service reps working for minimum wage. We don't care. We put up with you because we don't have a choice."

"You can think what you like."

None of what was happening seemed real. The hallucinations seemed more real than what was currently happening. Marion paused thinking his options over, they seemed bad and worse. Darius stood grinning and Maia continued to pull on her mother's dress. The boy stood there quietly watching. Before Marion could decide on a course of action, Burt put a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on guy."

"Fine. You win."

"That's what high achievers do."

Burt walked Marion to the front door.

"He can't not pay me. Can he?" Marion asked.

"I don't know. It's not cool, but I bet he's going to make me call the cops if you try to come back. That's what he normally does when he fires somebody. But hey, maybe this is a good thing. You were to smart for this job. Maybe this is a sign that you need to find your calling. Maybe this is the start of something better."

Marion sighed, "Thanks Burt. It's been good working with you."

"You too. You were a fun guy."

"Not to everyone apparently." Marion began to make his way to the bus stop. He didn't bother running and didn't look up. About half way there, he realized he could remove his tie. He pulled the tie and slid it loose from around his neck. He held up the tie and looked at it in disgust. Marion hated neckties. As he passed a waste bin he shoved the tie in the basket without stopping. He reached the bus as was startled out of his self-loathing briefly as the bus rounded the corner and stopped neatly in from of him.

"Now I get lucky." He muttered bitterly as he sat in a prime seat near the doors mid way back on the bus.

Marion knew something was wrong as soon as he stepped into the alley. His window now had police tape across the width of its shattered surface. He turned and glared at the MIB poster.

"So what? I'm only lucky on little things that don't matter? On big things probability gets free kicks, is that it?"

The poster said nothing. Marion headed up to his apartment the more traditional way, fearing what he knew must be at the top. His door was closed, police tape stretched across it. Three men in police uniforms and Mr. Grimly stood before the door. One of the officers noticed him and pointed, Mr. Grimly nodded in response.

Mr. Grimly was built like a giant toad had bought Jabba the Hut's weight loss video. He always dressed in a grey pinstriped suit and jacket, plus a white collared shirt with the collar opened one button too wide, exposing garish silver chains with heavily embellished crucifixes. The clothing was all reasonable quality, but looked cheap because Mr. Grimly sweated constantly, even in the dead of winter, leaving all his clothes horribly stained by mid morning. He tended to stand with his hand pressed together just beneath his chin like some cheap children's movie villain from some fairy tale about an evil Uncle or Court Wizard.

Marion walked towards the four men as though in a daze. The officers explained that he had been robbed, with entry likely gained by breaking a window. Marion did not correct them. They indicated that the likely reason for the break in was that the window had not been properly secured, and pointed to the remains of Marion's window system now sitting in a plastic bag. Virtually everything portable and reasonably valuable had been taken: his laptop, his portable television and blu-ray player, etc... All that was left behind was a single poster: The Matrix Revolutions, and his sleeping bag which was found in the hallway.

Police took Marion's statement. Marion kept thing pretty vague, indicating that he had left for work early due to an opening shift, and not correcting them about him breaking the window. He hoped Mrs. Trilby had not told them about his escapades. Once they had taken his statement, the Police officers indicated that he was free to enter the apartment and to call them if he thought of anything. One officer advised that it was unlikely they would recover anything.

Once the officers had left, Grimly began to chuckle, "So you know, I'm going to bill you for the window you little pill bug. That was your stupid little wannabe handyman bunk that let those guys in. I heard them in there and thought it was you. You're such a weasel I thought you were trying to avoid me. So since the break in is your fault, you get to pay for the window. And furthermore, I'm going to be keeping the damage deposit."

"What do you mean, keeping the damage deposit?" Marion asked.

"What I got to spell it out? I am evicting your little amoeba brained butt. Take your sleeping bag and your poster and don't come back. I already changed the locks and boarded up the window. You're done. Three strikes and you're out."

Marion shook his head.

"What's that? You don't like it? You wanna maybe dispute this? Take it to the tenant’s rights board or some such nonsense."

"Why bother? You win." Marion said and turned away.

"I'm gonna get the money I'm owed from you. I got your references, and I'm going squeeze until I get blood."

Marion shook his head and didn't turn around," Good luck with that."

The Story VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 7

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Seven: The Story

Marion stood frozen, his finger touching the cracked and drying blood on his lip. His mind tried to catch up with itself as it ran in circles inside his head screaming absurd theories and panicking.

"Okay, Option number one is that I bit my lip during the hallucination. And I guess it matches the scene from the dream world so well because my sick tumour ridden brain incorporated me biting my lip into the hallucination, because you know, it's considerate like that. Option number two is that I just dived head first into a less PG-13 version of the tales of Narnia, only without the wardrobe and the Lion Messiah analogue," Marion paused in mid monologue and noticed people were staring at him, he debated trying to hide, but discarded the idea and kept talking. He needed to clear his head more than he needed to look normal to strangers at this point.

"Of course option three would be that both things are true. I have a nasty brain tumour that is psychically teleporting me into a Narnia world where I can be a hero as my brain dies. Given the life I'm living, I could deal with that. The question then would be whether I stay in the Narnia land, with it's cannibal monsters and paranoid villagers after I die or the window is only temporarily open due to my occasionally amusing brain sickness?"

He paused again.

"There are probably other options, but I can't think of them right now. I can ask Harley later, he'll think of all the boring reasonable options. Harley!"

Marion tipped his head down to look at his cell phone, now sitting on the concrete walkway beneath his feet. He bent down and picked it up cautiously. The phone thankfully appeared to merely be scratched and not broken entirely- Marion could not afford to replace it if it broke. Harley's call had dropped. Marion noted that the phone was displaying seven new text messages. Marion opened his text messages, they were all from Harley.

<<Marion are you still there? I can't hear you but there's still sound on the phone.>>

<<Marion are you ok?>>

<<What's happening? Talk to me>>

<<You've got me worried. text back.>>

<<Marion>>

<<MARION!>>

<<Marion can you hear me? Do you need help? Marion when is your break over?>>

Marion's shoulders sagged as he read the last text. He looked at the time listed on the phone, he'd been in dreamland for at least twenty five minutes. His break was fifteen minutes. He was late. Again.

Marion quickly tapped out a text to Harley.

<<I'm ok. Late. Again. Hallucinated again. I'll tell you later. So screwed. I'm never lucky.>>

Marion considered his options. He could sneak back and hope that he hadn’t been missed. Or he could just tell Mr. Wheately that he had just made a pact to save the children of a lady from a magical village inside one of Marion’s hallucinations. Sneak and and hope that nobody had noticed seemed like the better option. If he was lucky, but that seemed like a bad thing to think about just at that moment. Marion darted back into the building and walked as casually as he could to his section while also staying out of clear view of other employees. Marion kept alert for any glimpse of the tall razor shaped profile of Mr. Wheately.

Marion finally reached the literature section, and with Mr. Wheately nowhere nearby and no anywhere in sight, Marion allowed himself a brief thought that maybe his luck wasn’t getting any worse. Marion truly loved bookstores, even big box commercialized cookie cutter bookstores like Allons-Y Books. Bookstores were quiet; almost like a library, although a bookstore was never that quiet. Marion took a moment to breathe in the silence, the quiet spaces in the air that gave Marion room to think. And then into that silence clamoured the sounds of a male and female voice rising in argument.

"This is not the time or the place, and neither is it your place to discuss your female objections to my business activities. Know your role in the grand scheme and keep to it Mary." The man's voice was loud, but he wasn't yelling. Marion knew that voice from University, he had heard it in the throat's of many tenured professors who didn't have a counter argument, but didn't agree with the student's assessment. Whoever Mary was, she was on the receiving end of an authority lecture. Marion also knew that if the fight got out of hand Mr. Wheately would somehow find a way to blame Marion for it. That seemed to be how the game was being played today at any rate. Marion strode through the shelves, honing in on the argument, hoping to placate the fighting couple before Mr. Wheately decided that this argument somehow showed something unemployable about Marion.

"Do you want to know what is my place Darius? My place is, as you so love to tell me, raising our children right. How am I going to raise them right when they watch you destroy lives for a few more dollars? How am I going to tell that it's important to be a moral and ethical person when their father is willing to gouge out an open pit mine in the middle a protected park on indigenous land by using the loophole of setting up a fake tribal council to approve your project? How do I tell them that morality is important when there father does that?"

"It's not a fake council, the local governments: both federal and municipal have recognized that tribal council as valid. And do you think that the world keeps turning without raw material? Do you think our comfortable existence with my lovely car and that amazing house you get to raise our children in are possible without the materials needed to build them? THey come from somewhere Mary, you just don't like to look at the process."

Marion rounded the corner and saw the people who were arguing. The man was imposing and dressed in a white on white suit with a crimson tie. He hair was a rich auburn streaked with grey. Two children, a girl with black hair who looked about nine years old and a boy with auburn hair who looked about thirteen years old stood behind the woman. Marion recognized the woman instantly as the woman from his hallucination.

"Morrigan?" He asked in surprise.

The family turned and they all looked at him in confusion, the man named Darius scowled, and the woman looked at Marion with an expression that told him instantly that she didn't know him. But he still knew her. Her hair was black with the same single strip of white. She was dressed in modern clothing, but all black with bird shaped patterns along the edges. This woman was Morrigan, Marion was sure of it. What he was to do know though, Marion had no idea.

"I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I help you folks find anything?"

"Yes," the woman said, " You can help my husband find your business ethics section. Meanwhile, I am looking for the works of Chinua Achebe. Do you know where his books are located?"

"My grasp of business and of ethics are perfect. Perhaps if you ran a business and had some income of your own, you would understand the realities of business and ethics on the ground." Darius said.

"I stayed home to raise the kids on your insistence you hypocrite. And I gave up a promising career to do so."

As the two began to argue again the girl pull on her mother's dress, "Mom. The Dreamer is here. He's here to help."

Marion looked at the little girl in shock.

"You have come to help, right?"

Darius stopped talking and looked back at Marion. "Of course he is. That's why we came in here. You should help them find the books Maia wants and then we can leave. It was Maia's idea to come here. So once we have her books, we can be on our way. We can continue this discussion in private, where family matters should remain."

Marion's mind raced, but he calmed himself back into bookseller mode, "You're in the right area for Chinua Achebe, it's sorted by last name in the Literature section. But I don't know that we'll have much of his work besides 'Thing's Fall Apart', the store tends to only stock things that have pop culture visibility," He turned to the little girl named Maia, "And what book did you want help finding?"

The little girl looked up and him, "Do you have any copies of 'Twelve Years a Slave'? Or what about Nelson Mandela's autobiography?"

"How old are you?" Marion asked.

"Nine. Why?"

"Those are heavy books. That's a great reading level for your age if your reading those books. Heavy subjects too, they're both about people who were unjustly imprisoned."

"Did you put her up to asking for those books?" Darius said, his voice rising to dangerous levels. He took a step closer to Mary and loomed over her in a way that made Marion suspect he might strike her. Marion quickly squeezed between them arms up.

"Kids are perceptive," Marion said quickly, "The whole store can tell you two are having difficulties, and your daughter is going to hear this at home too. If she's trying to send a message, maybe you should listen."

"How dare you! Do you know who I am? I am Darius Salt, and I could buy and sell you."

A little voice in Marion's head told him that this was not the situation he needed to be in right now. That little voice told him to back off, and to apologize and let the fight continue. Out of the corner of his vision, Marion could see Mr. Wheately leaning back against a bookshelf watching. Marion knew that how this ended would say a lot about his future at the company.

"Please help us." Maia said quietly. Marion wasn't sure if anyone else heard her. But Marion heard her.

"Then, Mr. Salt. Perhaps that says a lot more about why your daughter chose those books than anything her mother could have told her to say. Because, I you treat your business interests anything like you treat your family, your grasp of ethics would make Ebeneezer Scrooge shake his head at the disgrace of it."

Mr. Wheately seemed to materialize beside Marion as he finished speaking, "My name is Wheately, sir. I'm store manager. Can I be of some assistance?"

Darius Salt stood with his mouth open and stared at Marion for a moment. He tried to speak and made no sound. He opened his mouth a second time, but no words emerged. Maia giggled and finally Darius Salt found his voice again.

"Yes you can be of some assistance. Fire this employee."

"It would be my pleasure sir."

Marion smiled and shook his head, "At least I earned it."

An Ass Transformed VOL 1. CHP 1. VERSE 6

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter One

Verse Six: An Ass Transformed

The wendigo didn't so much run as it scrambled across the ground- Marion thought that thing was trying to run on all fours, but was being hampered by the proportions of its body which were still nominally human. The creature seemed bled dry, both of colour and of body fat. The Wendigo was so thin it might have passed for an Egyptian Mummy, save that it was very rapidly closing on Marion.

Marion took a moment before a thought occurred to him. Vision or not, tumour or not, he should probably be running right now. The wendigo was now close enough that Marion could count its teeth and smell its acid breath. That was enough of a preview for Marion.

Marion fled from the Wendigo.

The grey clay mud underneath Marion's feet didn't make flight easy and he scrambled along, not to unlike the Wendigo getting covered in grey as the paint like liquid clay sprayed up from his thrashing attempts to flee.

As he ran he heard bits and pieces of conversation.

"Is that a Wendigo?"

"The Knights of Purity will kill it."

"Who is that it's chasing?"

"Must be a savage, might turn into a Wendigo at any time."

"Maybe a spy for Blackhart?"

"Doesn't look like part of Blackhart's tribe."

"We should kill it just to be safe. Blackhart's raiding parties will starve us all."

"Maybe we should try to make peace?"

"Don't say such things, the King will send the Hound for you."

"He should send the Hound for Blackhart."

"The Hound can smell fear. It will cleanse the heathen and the infidel."

"I don't think Blackhart feels fear."

Most of the people's faces remained a blur as Marion ran through the muddy streets. Nobody got in Marion's way. But he did notice a woman dressed in considerably better than the undyed grey wool clothing of the other villagers. she was dressed in black with red bird-like patterns lining the sleeves and hemlines. Her appearance seemed ageless, she might have been thirty years old and might have been eighty. Her hair was raven black with a streak of grey running through it. Her eyes bore the hard expression of somebody who was used to being under attack and she used those eyes to stare Marion almost to a stop. She looked at Marion, and nodded with an expression that one might use for a business acquaintance or a distant relative.

The snarls of the Wendigo reminded Marion that he should be running. Beside the woman, three Soldiers turned and noticed the wendigo and the fleeing stranger. They were dressed in white tabbards with white leather plates visible underneath. On the tabbard in black was a sword engulfed in flame. One of the soldiers looked distinctly older, one was built like a large fat toad and looked unsettlingly familiar and the third was tall and thin as a paper cut and looked just like Percy Wheately.

"Lady Morrigan, we must destroy the monster." The eldest of the three soldiers said.

The woman nodded and the soldiers joined the pursuit without another word. Marion didn't look back to see how far behind the wendigo the soldiers were and simply ran on.

"Rule number one about horror movies: When running from the monster, don't look back and trip." Marion gasped to himself as he ran. But the grey mud under his feet was hard to get any traction on, and Marion found himself sliding and stumbling for more than he would like to be given the circumstances. He rounded a corner and found himself staring a stone well directly in his path. He tried to swerve and found he feet slipping free from the sloppy surface beneath him. His legs kicked skyward and his swung his arms wildly in a desperate attempt to first regain his balance and then, belatedly, to break his fall. His chin hit the ground first and he bit his tongue. His vision and his hearing faltered, and Marion found himself in a brief sea of white light and distant ringing bells, and then he was aware that he was lying in the liquid grey clay. As his hearing returned, Marion noticed the sounds of battle: the metal clang of swords, the the yells and grunts of physical exertion, the snarl of a cornered beast.

Marion pulled himself to his hands and knees, aware of the taste of blood in his mouth and feeling that blood trickling down his chin. Marion looked behind him to see the soldiers locked in combat with the wendigo, which they had back against the earthen wall of a nearby hut. The wendigo was unarmed, but even with just claws and fangs the monster was keeping both soldiers firmly on the defensive.

Marion tried to gather himself, and as he wobbled to his feet he noticed that a crowd had gathered. And again Marion became aware of bits of conversation from the crowd.

"Look at the savage. Look at the blood on his mouth. Who did he bite? He'll turn for sure."

"No, he has to actually eat them, otherwise every overactive lover would turn."

"It's not about eating, it's about the symbolic act of cannibalism. A person has to devour something of value, a betrayal of their people."

"That's rubbish, you watch. he'll turn any minute now."

A man screamed in pain, and Marion turn his attention back to the fight. The Wendigo had ripped out the throat of the fat soldier and taken his sword. The wendigo was not a skilled swordsman, but the extra ferocity of his attacks drove to two remaining soldiers back. The tide of the battled had clearly turned against the remaining two soldiers.

Marion shook his head. The soldier weren't winning. Marion wasn't sure they that they were going to survive. Marion glanced around and saw the crowd had dispersed. Now the villages cowered behind doors and peered over window frames. They weren't going to be helping any time soon, and Marion didn't see other soldiers nearby.

"At least in the first dream like this one I had my Tomahawks. What were they called: Victor and Edgar? Weird names, okay- but that fits my brain. Either way it would be nice have them so I could help."

As he was speaking, Marion noticed that his hands had closed around two cylindrical objects. He looked down and discovered that he did in fact have the tomahawks in his hands.

"More proof that this is a hallucination. But maybe I can win the hallucination." Marion said to him.

He sized up the Wendigo, now spattered with the soldiers' blood. It didn't look friendly. But at least compared to his last hallucinated battle, the odds were good here. Marion clenched his teeth and joined the fight. He didn't know how to fight, but he made the most of his position. The wendigo had pushed the soldiers back and Marion was now behind the creature. He charged silently and swung both tomahawks down onto the Wendigo's shoulders, cleaving into the creature and causing both its arms to fall limply to its sides. The Wendigo spun around to face Marion, arms pinwheeling like sock puppets, and the Wendigo lunged teeth first and Marion, causing him to stumble back and fall hard to the ground. The impact of the fall drove the air from his lungs, and Marion looked up in terror at the advancing Wendigo as Marion struggled to force air back into his lungs.

The Wendigo now had it's back to the soldiers and they took advantage by thrusting swords through the back of the wendigo, metal triangles protruding from the creatures chest pinning it to the sky above Marion as it thrashed and frothed and slowly died.

Marion scrambled out from under the quivering wendigo, and the eldest soldier placed a booted foot on the creature's back and pushed it loose from the two swords to land in the liquid clay.

Marion started to thank the soldiers, but stopped short noting that they were staring at him with expressions that didn't scream gratitude. Marion suddenly noticed people whispering about his tomahawks.

"I saw him summon those weapons."

"A wizard."

"Those are the weapons of the savage."

"A witch."

"A wizard."

"He'd have slit our throat while we slept."

"Worse than a Wendigo. We're probably lucky the Wendigo flushed him out." The Mr. Wheately Guard muttered

Marion shook his head as the soldiers began to advance upon him with their swords pointed forward.

"I've got to get a rabbit's foot or something. This luck is going to kill me."

Marion spun his heel in the mud and grabbed the well for support and then bolted. Soldiers gave chase. Marion could hear them behind him. They were armoured, and Marion noticed that they hadn't caught him and the Wendigo until he had fallen. Maybe he could outrun them. Although where he would run, Marion was entirely unsure. He didn't know the layout of the town, and he expected that the soldiers did.

Marion couldn't see any street signs and the repeating collection of mud house, log house, sod house quickly blurred in Marion's mind and he found himself running wildly down slippery mud streaked gaps between buildings that all looked alike.

"I'm lost in a hostile dream town in the middle a hallucination, any minute now I'm going to find myself in my underwear." Marion gasped between ragged breaths.

Marion had been right about being faster than the soldiers, but he was starting to wear out. And to make matters worse, the Soldiers clearly knew the town well and had ambushed him several time by popping out in front of them. Marion had scrambled down a different alley each time, but he had the distinct sense that he was being funnelled and there was little he could do about it.

Marion's fears were confirmed when he scrambled out of an alley and found himself staring a vertical log walls on three sides, trapped against the wall outside the bailey of the castle.

"I see you're in danger Dreamer. Perhaps I can help." Marion turned to see the woman from earlier leaning over the wall to look down at him.

Marion shook his head, "Who are you? How do you know me? I mean besides this being my hallucination brought on by a brain tumour? Should I be doing this, having a discussion with my hallucination about the brain tumour causing that hallucination?"

"I am Morrigan. This is not a hallucination, this is a vision of the Shadowlands. This is story. That is how I know you, you are one of the Storytellers, and I need your help."

Marion heard the sounds of armoured bodies moving towards the corner where he stood, "What kind of help?"

"Aid my children. They need the help of the Storytellers. Dreamer and Walker are the ones that the story says will guide them to their destiny, and without the help of the storytellers, they will never be free. This is the price of my help. Decide quickly."

"I don't have much other option, unless I want to find out what it's like to die in a hallucination. I don't much like that option. In those dreams where you're falling, you always want to wake up before you hit bottom. So alright. If I ever meet your children, I will help them."

"You swear on your role in the story?" She asked.

"I hear him." One of the soldiers whispered," He's talking to somebody."

"Yes, fine. I swear."

She clasped her hands and drew a symbol in the air and then leaned down to tap Marion's forehead. Marion's vision went black for a moment and then he blinked and found himself standing where he had begun. He looked down, he clothes were unmarked by the mud.

"Yup," He said quietly, "Hallucination."

He grinned, and felt a slightly crackling on his lip and chin. He reached up and wiped cracked and drying blood from his lips.

"okay, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that." He whispered.