Drug of choice

“Right, now, before any of you wise-asses start snickering about it, yes, the “drug” ring was being run outta the back of Starbucks. Ironic I know, now get over it; it’s not that damn funny.

Bout three years ago we started hearin’ about a new designer drug called Damnation. Thing is, all it did was cause a euphoric sensation and left the user feeling guilt-free, energized, happy, productive and, I’m told, allowed for some really great sex. With all the other shit on the street Damnation really wasn’t high priority if you get me.

Then people started dieing. Not overdosing or anything like that mind you, but homicides. We don’t get a lot of that up here in Seattle, so, it didn’t take a lot to show up on radar if you get me. I only have a few minutes here so I’ll cut to the frickin’ chase. You see, when this started happenin’ we also stated hearin’ more and more from the star-gazin’ crystal-lovin’ hocus pocus types too. You know, the X-Files, Buffy world’s bein’ overrun by spooks types if you get me.

Eventually we tracked the whole thing back to this Damnation drug. Some supernatural/shrink consultant explained it as being a drug that tore down all inhibitions and concerns with, you know, morals, ethics and all that. Basically it dissolved the soul and left the body just fine. And better yet, the pushers were from hell. Course we all agreed that was a load of crap. Still, suddenly we had just a load of sociopaths runnin’ around poppin’ people left and right. Seems like every third person and his aunt Emma had decided to become a serial killer. Oh lucky us.

We finally tracked the bastards down and sure enough, demons.
Posted by Shawn at 7:44 PM 0 comments


Careful, they bite
So, I was watching a show in the Discovery channel (or some “smart tv” channel as we collectively refer to the History, Discovery and TLC channels) and someone was suggesting that crop circles may be, what I would call, a supernatural/natural phenomenon. That is, some sort of ionized wind vortex that touches down like a mini tornado, but, is able to leave geometric shapes due to the fact that the vortex owes its origin to a sort of collective, subconscious psychic power of the entire human race.

Sooooo, okey dokie says I. Not being one to poo poo anyone’s theories I in fact rather liked the idea of phenomenon and even supernatural creatures resulting from the collective sub consciousness of the human race. How about nasty, little black creatures spawned from such emotions as greed, jealousy, bigotry and rage. Or, conversely, lovely faerie-like creatures resulting from love, kindness, hope and charity.

So remember, the next time you lose your cool in traffic, make a racial slur or horde money when a family goes without, maybe, just maybe a set of little, black eyes open somewhere far away and teeth, sharp and hungry drip with the spittle of human corruption.
Posted by Shawn at 7:41 PM 0 comments


As long as I keep typing everything’s ok
As long as I can just keep something, anything flowing, to hold the chaos at bay, to define the world as we know it, or at least as I know it, it’ll keep going. But they’re there, in the shadows, I can see them from the corner of my eye, waiting, waiting for me to stop, waiting for an opening to glide in and tear it all apart.

I can’t say I really know what they are - demons of some sort - whispering, grinning with stark white teeth and ash black faces more of a smoky abstraction than a thing of skin and bone, but they’re evil. They want to change everything, to shred the very fabric of what we hold to be true, chaos, darkness and fear. But I can stop them, I can hold them off, I can keep writing and writing and defining the world, cataloging this reality as it is right now, I can keep it all going, I can hold them at bay. A war’s broken out over seas somewhere, no, no it hasn’t, I won’t let it! The White House is repealing the Constitution, NO, no I won’t let that happen. I’ll write an article saying it was all a big mistake and everything’s fine; I’ll save it all, I’ll protect us all as long as I can keep writing we’re safe.

Wait, what was that beep? My battery! I’m nearly out of power, NO, if I stop writing…
Posted by Shawn at 7:39 PM 0 comments


Aaron Flesher could remember the future
He knew that in 2044 they would start terra-forming Mars and that they had established the first colony there some 12 years before that. He knew that in 2054 the U.N. would recognize artificial intelligence as sentient and therefore deserving of human rights. He remembered when they discovered evidence of life on Europa in 2066 even though it clearly had died out millions of years before. He remembered the first contact with alien life carried on radio waves from deep space. He remembered a great many things from the later half of the 21st century and he knew, he absolutely knew that these were memories not premonitions. None of this would be of particular interest was it not the year 2029.

What Flesher didn’t know was why he knew so much of the future and so little of the present. This place, this time seemed so primitive to him and so alien. Not alien in an otherworldly sense of the word, as, this was his Earth. The world was as he knew it, as he remembered it, but of an earlier time. How then, he wondered, had he come to be here, some 30 years before his birth. There was no such thing as time travel either in this time or in his. Had he somehow come detached from the time continuum or perhaps his consciousness found a way, intentionally or otherwise, to travel back in time? If so, why, and how and how would he return?

What Flesher didn’t know, and never would, was that in fact time travel did exist, or more accurately, once existed. It was a reality of his time, the latter part of the 21st century before he was sent back to the year 2029 to prevent one Dr. Albert Kemmelman from laying the groundwork for such an abomination against reality. In 2032 Kemmelman was to, or would have, or did in one reality, publish his research titled “A Dissertation on Time Slippage” that in turn sparked the first practical research into time travel. Once such travel was made possible by the most brilliant and well meaning of scientific minds the world was thrown into chaos. The paradox of changing the past was inevitable and seemingly irreversible. Until that is, agent Aaron Flesher was sent back to see that this atrocity was never started in the first place. Mr. Flesher succeeded in his mission of “negotiating timeline paradigm” and, for the time anyhow, the development of time travel was never begun.

He sat and remembered a future reality, a time familiar yet distant from which he was stranded with no possible explanation.