Later that evening, with his karate-chopping wife having gone to bed early, Gerrod found himself on his front porch wondering what the hell was going on. The night was particularly warm and unusually quiet. In fact, yes, even the crickets were silent.

  Very unusual, indeed.

  Gerrod kept turning the same question over and over in his brain: How was it that both he and the city-slicker were dreaming of the same fire woman?

  He didn’t know. So he sat on the deck outside his back door and looked out across his modest garden. From here he could see the dark shape of the silo blotting out the many stars in the sky, like a great redwood tree.

  Or, with its domed top, the mother of all phallic symbols.

  The wind picked up and blew the loose top soil around. Gerrod sank deeper into his rocking chair and closed his eyes and was soon fast asleep.

  Gerrod was awakened by the sound of heavy boots creaking across the wooden porch. His eyes snapped open, and the moment they did an ache filled his heart. A longing unlike anything he had ever experienced filled his entire being.

  Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

  The man standing over him materialized into Joseph Harper, the city-slicker. Harper said, “She came to me again, Gerrod. Tonight is the night. She is coming for you, in every sense of the word.” Harper shook his head and looked up into the sky. His hands were tucked deep into his jacket pockets. “I work my ass off to get that fucking silo ready, and you get to have all the fun.”

  But Gerrod wasn’t listening. He was nearly in a panic. He reached out and grabbed the city-slicker’s dirty, stained jeans. “She didn’t come, man. I didn’t dream of her tonight!”

  Harper slapped the old man’s hand away. “Oh, she’ll be here soon enough, big guy. In the flesh. That’s why you didn’t dream of her. The dreams are over.”

  She would come here? In the flesh?

  “But...but she’s just a dream....”

  “Sure she is,” said the city-slicker, surprisingly cool and calm on this night. Gone was the manic insanity Gerrod had seen earlier. “Which is why we are both dreaming of her, right? Anyway, my final instruction is to tell you to wait for her in the field next to the silo. She also wanted me to tell you who she is.”

  “But...but she’s just a dream....”

  Harper wasn’t listening. “She is as old as the earth itself. She loves and watches over all living things. She is complete in and of herself. She is perfection. She is beauty. She is Mother Earth, Mother Nature, God, Gaia, the Cosmos, the Universal Heart. She needs no one, worships no one. In her, of her, is balance and order.” Harper took a deep breath. “Here, in Wheatopia, the land is out of balance. She is here to restore it. And so she has called upon me and upon you, Gerrod, and now the path has been sown for her arrival.”

  And Gerrod, to his surprise, knew in his heart the city-slicker was speaking the truth.

  “I’m done here,” Harper continued, and he sounded deeply and utterly exhausted. “Tomorrow my wife and I will pack up and leave. She will have her pretty little home back and I will try to forget any of this ever happened.”

  The stars above sparkled, but, oddly, the moon had disappeared. It had been there just a few minutes ago. Or had it? A slow, unnerving wind hummed through the twisted branches of the stunted trees. Dead bushes with their dead branches swished together like dried skin against dead bone.

  The city-slicker looked at the old man for a minute or two, and then turned and left and never returned to Wheatopia again. Gerrod sat for a long time and then finally stood and made his way across the porch. He then crossed the dusty street and worked his way through the open field and found himself behind the city-slicker’s farm. Next to him, rising like a massive penis into the sky, was the silo. Erect, hard, beautifully turgid.

  There was more wind, followed now by a slow moaning. The moaning seemed to come from above.

  Gerrod’s heart was pounding hard against his lungs, driving the breath from him. He swallowed, but his mouth was eternally dry.

  Something above caught his attention. A star. But not just any star. A shooting star, moving rapidly across the sky. A meteor? A plane?

  He watched it curiously. And as he did so, blood was diverted from his brain and to his loins, and the swelling in his overalls started all over again.

  Gerrod realized he was wrong on all accounts. The light wasn’t moving across the sky, as if it were a shooting star or a plane. No, it was descending, and rapidly growing larger. The very human part of Gerrod squeaked like a mouse and, with great fear in his heart, he dropped to his knees.

  All the while, his aged member grew in his overalls. It grew and it grew.

  Dear Lord, the sky is falling...and I’m as hard as a rock.

  The star continued to fall and as it did its furious light touched everything. The night briefly turned into day, at least in the field around the silo.

  Gerrod was terrified. Coherent thought escaped him completely. His mind raced wildly. He was certain this was what it felt like to completely and totally lose your mind. His erection softened.

  Peace, Gerrod, said a voice in his head.

  And he did indeed feel peace. Almost instantly, the fear was gone. His penis hardened again.

  Very good, Gerrod.

  The fire was hovering above him. He could feel its heat along the back of his neck and along the curve of bowed spine. Sweat sprung from all his pores, instantly soaking his clothing.

  His turgid penis pushed painfully against his overalls, begging for release. Harder than it had ever been before. Harder than any man had a right to be. Painful. Pleasurable. Beyond intense.

  Remove your clothing, Gerrod.

  He did so. Instantly. And as he tore off his denim overalls, he caught something in the corner of his eye that would forever haunt him. Something dropped from the sky, something burning and shapely and more beautiful than he had ever seen in all his life. And now Gerrod knew he was dreaming.

  Had to be dreaming.

  It was, of course, the same burning woman from his dreams. But now she was as a building, and she was squatting down onto the silo—

  Lie on your back, Gerrod.

  Gerrod did so. Butt naked. In the dirt. His thunderously erect penis rising high into the night like a miniature version of the silo next to him. And the moment he was on his back, he had the disconcerting feeling that someone, or something, had climbed on top of him. Something burning—

  His body reacted powerfully. His back arched. He dug his fingers into the dead earth, clawing....

  A great rhythmic hiss came from the silo, and keeping pace with the hiss was a slow, deep fire that rose and fell along Gerrod’s supernaturally hardened shaft. The pleasure was almost painful. Gerrod was certain he would have a heart attack. In fact, he could be having one now.

  Peace, Gerrod, all is well.

  The hissing from the silo came faster and faster. And with it, the sweet, painful heat along his shaft kept pace.

  The pain—

  The pleasure—

  Gerrod moaned. His arthritic fingers dug deeper into the earth. His eyelids fluttered, and when they did he caught site of the fiery woman of his dreams as she rode up and down on the silo.

  Sweat ran steadily from Gerrod’s body.

  He gasped.

  He grunted.

  He clawed the dead, dry soil....

  And in the end, when the rhythmic hissing from the silo turned into one long, unwavering moan, a moan that could have just as easily been the wind blowing hard through the wilted trees, Gerrod soared to heights few mortals would ever experience—

  And far below his old body was gushing stream after stream of milky semen. Great, arching geysers, each instantly swept up by the wind and sprinkled over the earth.

  And still he came. More semen than Gerrod had ever thought possible for one old man to possess.

  He came and he came....

  ***

  You did good, Gerrod.

  “I need a cigarette,” said Gerrod, lying on his back.

  The voice inside his head laughed. Gerrod closed his eyes, still recovering from the mother of all orgasms. When he finally managed to sit up, he saw that the fire woman was gone. She had left behind only a scorched and useless silo. From the top of the silo, gleaming in the moonlight, was the oozing, stinking magical concoction that the city-slicker had so dutifully created in his vat.

  Next to him, miraculously, was a pack of Camels and a lighter. Gerrod laughed. With a shaking hand, he lit his first cigarette. And as he exhaled, smiling, it began to rain.

  And the rains continued for forty days and forty nights.

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  My Father’s Eyes

  Death came to Hollywood. He came and he went, but before he went he stopped for a drink.

  I was tending bar and watching the Dodger game and wondering how my pops was doing when I heard the whinny of a horse. A horse? My bar, located in the middle of Hollywood, wasn’t near any horse ranches, or ranches of any sort, for that matter. Any horse that came through these parts would have been a stage prop. Stage props, as far as I was aware, didn’t whinny.

  Frowning, I turned and looked out the bar’s smoked glass doors and there, sure enough, was a pale mare. A man dressed in black had just slipped out of the saddle and was now throwing the reins around something nearby, perhaps the payphone near the front doors.

  I watched all of this, stunned. The dirty glass I had been cleaning was completely forgotten. I watched the man in black look around, slap dust from his shoulders, and then push his way into my bar.

  It was the middle the of the day, after the lunch rush, which meant the bar was empty. The man in black stood in the deep shadows at the entrance and seemed to survey the room, the way a gunslinger would have upon entering a saloon. This wasn’t a saloon. This was, by all estimations, a dive. And a not very good one at that. But at least it was mine.

  Anyway, the man in black stood so still that he seemed to almost disappear into the shadows. As if he and the shadows were one. I blinked and rubbed my eyes and he promptly reappeared. Surely that had just been a strange trick of light, right?

  Then again, was the horse tied out front a trick of light? No, it was really there, and it was currently pawing at the broken concrete and weeds that ran in front of my shop. I think I even heard it snort.

  Finally, the man in black stepped out of the shadows and moved towards me. Due to his long, flowing black robe, I couldn’t see his feet, and the effect of his movement was startling. He seemed to glide, or float across the floor. As he approached, I saw that something was attached to his back.

  Jesus, is that a sword?

  No, it was bigger, longer. Crooked.

  It was a scythe.

  What the hell?

  He stopped before me. No, he hovered before me. He seemed to study me from beneath the depths of his hood, his face still hidden in shadows. Finally, he reached out a pale white hand and pulled out a nearby stool and sat.

  Admittedly, I was expecting a friend of mine to throw back the hood and have a good laugh at my expense, perhaps a stunt to lighten my mood, especially considering I had been down in the dumps for some time now due to my old man. My father, sick with cancer, was, according to the doctors, as close to death as it gets. Unfortunately, he lived halfway across the country and I couldn’t be with him, although I had visited him last week and spent as long as I could with him.

  A stunt? Maybe. But my friends, I knew, wouldn’t be this heartless, this cruel. They knew how hard my father’s death was hitting me.

  Then maybe I’m making this up. Maybe the stress is getting to me. Maybe I’m asleep at this very moment. Maybe I’m dreaming about the horse and the scythe and the black hood.

  Maybe.

  The man turned and looked at me, and for the first time I saw clearly into his hood. I knew immediately he was no friend of mine and this wasn’t a stunt. I also knew I wasn’t dreaming, because my stomach turned so violently that surely I would have awakened by now. How I didn’t wretch, I don’t know.

  It was the face. The skin appeared composed of numerous swatches of flesh, even of different colored flesh, some darker and some lighter. His nose was just a small mound of layered flesh and his mouth was nearly non-existent. I was reminded of Frankenstein’s monster.

  Perhaps most shockingly, as my stomach recoiled and I fought a strong desire to call the police, there was something oddly familiar about the man. Yes, familiar.

  It’s his eyes, I thought.

  Somehow they put me at ease. Granted, I shouldn’t have been at ease. I should have been fleeing out my bar and up Hollywood Blvd. And yet the eyes calmed me, soothed me.

  Saying nothing, the man in the hood pointed to my beer taps behind me. In a mild state of shock, I moved shakily over to the taps.

  “You want a drink?” I asked.

  He nodded. I pointed to the Coors tap and he vehemently shook his head, his once warm and gentle eyes flaring irritably. I moved over to the Michelob. Another sharp shake of his head. At the Newcastle, he nodded once and winked.

  Confused, alarmed, curious, and horrified, I poured him a frothing mug of Newcastle, and set it before him. He didn’t drink it at first. In fact, he didn’t drink it at all. Instead, he stared down into it, long and hard. Suddenly, I remembered his distinct lack of a normal mouth.

  “Can you drink it?” I asked.

  He shook his head, still staring down into the drink.

  “Can you speak?”

  He shook his head again. He looked away from the beer and back at me. As he did so, I did my best to ignore his patchwork face. Instead, I looked into his eyes. Those warm and soft eyes. Those familiar eyes. They were searching my face, every square inch of it, as if he was soaking me in. I found myself unable to tear my gaze away from him.

  “I’m, I’m sorry you can’t drink it,” I said, stammering a little. “Are you sick?”

  He shook his head.

  “My father is sick. He helped me start this place, you know. But that was years ago. Interestingly, he likes Newcastle as well. In fact, it’s his favorite—”

  The eyes!

  The man tilted his head, and then nodded slowly, seemingly reading my thoughts. His eyes shined brightly, happily. Except, I was certain, they weren’t really his eyes.

  “I’m dreaming,” I said aloud. “This has to be a dream.”

  The man shook his head and the happy glow in his eyes disappeared. No, not his eyes.

  My father’s eyes.

  He suddenly turned in his stool, and looked back toward the front doors, back toward his tethered white horse. I looked, too, and suddenly had to rub my own eyes. After all, it appeared that sunlight was shining through the white horse.

  I need a drink.

  But the man kept on looking until I realized he was trying to convey something to me, to communicate with me.

  I took a stab at it. “You have to go now?”

  Nodding, he looked back at me, and the eyes, those familiar hazel eyes with a touch of gold, were wet. He blinked once and a tear made its way over the patchwork of mottled flesh that composed the man’s face. The entity’s face. Although those thin, slashing lips didn’t move, the eyes themselves seem to smile. My father smiled. At me. For the last time.

  The man stood. As he did so, his black hood fell forward, briefly obscuring his face. He glanced over at me and what I saw shining back at me within the hood was very much not my father’s eyes. These eyes were tiny and black and soulless.

  I involuntarily stepped back. Hell, most people would have run for the hills after seeing those black eyes. The man looked at me some more, then adjusted the scythe on his back. He turned and glided back through the bar, his long black robe hanging limply, his feet hidden within the draping folds.

  If he had feet at all.

  I never actually saw him opening or closing the smoked glass door. One moment he was in front of them and the next he was outside, in the sunlight. And as he untethered his horse, he seemed to lose his mass, and was now looking less and less like a man and more and more like a shadow.

  A living shadow who now mounted his pale horse.

  Once on the horse, he pulled hard on the reins, and the great white beast reared back and pawed the air with its front hooves. It whinnied loudly, and death looked briefly at me, through the smoky glass of the front door, and then he slapped the reins and horse broke into a run. Five or six steps later, before they had moved completely out of my line of vision, both horse and rider disappeared.

  I did not just see that.

  It was many minutes later when my brain finally kicked into gear. I knew my father had passed. I knew this because he had come visit me one last time. I supposed I could have called my mother to confirm this, but for now I could barely move, much less talk coherently.

  Instead, I looked at the sweating mug of Newcastle still sitting on the counter, where death himself had sat.

  Where my father had sat, too.

  I reached for the mug, surprised that my hand wasn’t shaking more. I took hold of the mug, brought it to my lips, and took one hell of a long pull. I then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and held up the mug.

  “Goodbye, pops.”

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  The Fridge

  Beat up and bruised, the two delivery men looked as if they had gone a few rounds with Randy Couture. One of them was even bleeding from a badly scraped elbow. Both were wearing blue coveralls with the Sears logo stitched over the right breast pocket. Both uniforms were soaked through with sweat.

  When they were finished, I tipped them each twenty dollars and told them to go get some Taco Bell on me.

  We were standing on the upstairs landing just outside my condo. The setting sun was dipping below the distant skyline of condo rooftops and shining straight into our faces. The deliverymen had arrived just before noon to deliver my new refrigerator. It was now nearly dusk. The delivery had taken all day.